Laos needs 30 million dollars a year to clear US bombs

monstersandcritics.com

Apr 25, 2011, 8:51 GMT

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Vientiane – Laos needs 30 million dollars per year to remove the unexploded ordnance dumped on the country by the United States during the Vietnam War, media reports said Monday.

Since the government set up the Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme in 1996, it has received about 7 to 8 million dollars a year from donors, far below the 30 million needed, the state-run Vientiane Times reported.

The programme has cleared only 1 per cent of the country, or about 19,000 hectares, of unexploded bombs since 1996.

Laos is the country with the highest concentration of unexploded cluster munitions.

The US, as part of its so-called ‘secret war’ in Laos, dropped millions of bombs and mines on the eastern provinces, flying as many as 500,000 bombing sorties between 1964-73.

The objective was to destroy the jungle bases of Lao and Vietnamese communist forces and disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the main logistical passage from North to South Vietnam.

Up to 30 per cent of the 270 million bomblets failed to explode on impact, posing an ongoing threat. Last year, of the 100 confirmed casualties of cluster munitions worldwide, 33 were in Laos, according to the Cluster Munitions Monitor campaign group.

The unexploded ordnance programme receives support from Australia, Germany, the European Union, Japan, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, Britain and the United States.

Tags: clear US bombs, dropped millions of bombs, Secret War in Laos, unexploded