U.S. Will Grant $10M for UXO Clearance in Vietnam: Under Secretary of State

The U.S. will grant $10 million to help Vietnam remove unexploded ordnance (UXO) left in the Vietnam War as an effort to promote the bilateral relations which was normalized in 1995, Rose Gottemoeller, under secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said in a visit to the central province of Quang Tri on Mar 2. The funding with 80% to go to the central province of Quang Tri, 391,000 hectares or 83.8% of land are contaminated with UXO, shows the U.S.’s continuing support to the Southeast Asian country in solving wartime leftover that has caused bad impacts on locals’ life, state media reported. Quang Tri, one of the hardest-hit localities by war-left consequences after the Vietnam War ended in 1975, reports the number of bomb and mine accidents at 127 in the 2008-2014 period, compared to 456 in 2000-2007 thanks to the support of non-governmental organizations (NGO) since 1996 after the Vietnamese government allowed the locality to cooperate with foreign NGO and U.S.-based PeaceTrees Vietnam became the first working in the province. At the end of 2014, international NGOs, including UK-based Mine s Advisory Group (MAG), Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), Project RENEW - Restoring the Environment and Neutralizing the Effects of the War, and Clear Path International (CPI) helped cleanup 8,399 hectares of soil for Quang Tri, removed and detected 556,448 UXO items in the past two decades. The U.S. army used more than 15 million tons of UXO in Vietnam in the war and 10% of them are unexploded and scattered everywhere. Domestic and foreign experts said that Vietnam needs 300 years more to remove all bombs and mines. Landmines and dioxin remain a thorny issue preventing the further development of the bilateral ties despite efforts to overcome the consequences that killed and caused injury to more than 100,000 Vietnamese people since the end of the Vietnam War. Vietnam has several hot spots contaminated with Agent Orange/dioxin, including Danang and Phu Cat airports in the central city of Danang and the central province of Binh Dinh, respectively. Both the airports were used as airbases of the U.S. troops. Currently, the U.S. is supporting Vietnam to carry out a dioxin cleanup project costing $84 million in Danang airport, marking Washington’s 1st involvement in cleaning up dioxin residue in the Southeast Asian country after the war. (Tien Phong – Pioneer Mar 3 p2, Dai Doan Ket – Great Unity Mar 3 p10)