“I believe we will make great strides in politics, economy, culture, and many other areas in our future cooperation”, said Soukthavy Keola, former Counselor of Lao Embassy in China.
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The U.S. has vowed to double spending on the cleanup operation to roughly $90 million over three years.
President Obama continued his historic visit to Laos, addressing the painful legacy of a bloody conflict that has continued to torment the Lao people five decades after the Vietnam War.
Obama is touring a rehabilitation center in Laos that treats victims of bombs the US dropped during the Vietnam War.
In the central Lao province of Xieng Khouang, the area most heavily bombed by U.S. aircraft during the war in neighbouring Vietnam, there is a trail of devastation.
Half a century ago, the United States turned Laos into history’s most heavily bombed country, dropping two million tons of ordnance in a covert, nine-year chapter of the Vietnam War.
Duterte was supposed to have a bilateral meeting with Obama at the sidelines of the Asean Summit but was cancelled after the Philippine President launched tirades against Obama.
The 90 million dollars is a relatively small sum for the U.S. but a significant investment for a small country in one of the poorer corners of the world.
Obama plans to meet with injured survivors and be briefed by center officials.
The president did not come to apologise.
China considers Singapore a key partner for cooperation in the region, while close communications between the two nations’ leaders can help keep the development of China-Singapore ties on the right track, boost pragmatic cooperation, and deepen the friendship of the two peoples, said Li. Of all the provinces in landlocked Laos, only one has a comprehensive system to care for bomb survivors.
The $90 million Obama announced follows $100 million the USA has committed in the past 20 years.
For nine years, the USA conducted a bombing campaign on landlocked Laos in an effort to cut off communist forces in neighboring Vietnam.
Between 1964 and 1973 a secret CIA-led operation to cut supplies to the Vietcong resulted in two million tons of ordinance being dropped on Laos – more than the combined total dropped on both Japan and Germany during World War Two. Taking its turn as the chair of the regional forum, the Laos’ communist government is using the moment to seize the spotlight. Clinton, who as secretary of state was an architect of Obama’s policy of emphasizing the importance of the Asia Pacific to USA interests in the face of a rising China, said Obama was right to cancel the meeting.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte expressed regret today over his “son of a bitch” remark while referring to President Barack Obama, in a rare display of contrition by a politician whose wide arc of profanities has unabashedly targeted world figures including the pope and the United Nations chief.
But Obama’s outreach to those regional powers hit a snag just as he arrived in the region from China.
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The issue has long dogged relations between the United States and Laos, a cloistered and impoverished communist nation.
