Tri-Service

The Moral Obligation To Clear Up Unexploded Bombs

Barack Obama has paid tribute to survivors maimed by 80 million unexploded bombs America dropped on Laos decades ago and pledged US help to finally clean them up.

Touring a rehabilitation centre in Vientiane, Mr Obama said the US had a "profound moral and humanitarian obligation" to work to prevent more bloodshed from the remnants of the US bombardment during the Vietnam War.

He touted his administration's move to double spending on ordnance clean-up to roughly 90 million dollars (£67 million) over three years. Mr. Obama said:

"For the last four decades, Laotians have continued to live under the shadow of war... The war did not end when the bombs stopped falling".

About 20,000 people have been killed or wounded since the the war ended, he said after viewing displays of small rusted grenades and photos of a child missing his foot. He insisted they were "not just statistics" but reminders of the heavy toll inflicted by war.

"I'm inspired by you," he told one survivor, Thoummy Silamphan, who uses a prosthetic after losing a hand to one of the bombs.

Half a century ago, the US 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. The first US president to set foot in Laos while in office, Mr Obama lamented that many Americans remain unaware of the "painful legacy".

The 90 million dollars is a relatively small sum for the US but a significant investment for a small country in one of the poorer corners of the world. Mr Obama sought to put a human face on the issue by meeting survivors of bombs America dropped.

The president did not come to apologise. Instead, he said he hoped the strengthened partnership on clearing the bombs could mark a "decisive step forward" between the US and this landlocked communist nation.

Thanks to global clean-up efforts, casualties from tennis ball-sized "bombies" that still litter the Laotian countryside have plummeted from hundreds to dozens per year, but aid groups say far more help is needed. Of all the provinces in Laos, only one has a comprehensive system to care for bomb survivors.