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Republic of Korea’s President to Visit Laos

The President of the Republic of Korea Ms Park Geun-hye will pay an official state visit to Laos on September 9 in response to an invitation from Lao President, Mr. Bounnhang Vorachit, the President’s Office announced yesterday.

ASEAN Actively Contributes to International Affairs: President

President Bounnhang Vorachit has told the G20 Summit that ASEAN, the 10-member regional bloc which Laos chairs this year, has actively contributed to addressing global crises, the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said.

Obama’s Laos Visit: Changing History or Asia ‘Pivot’?

WHILE Barack Obama’s visit to Laos this week is the first ever by any U.S. president and hence ‘historical’, it is not merely history that Obama is after nor is the visit aimed at washing from the public memory the horrors of massive bombing Laos was subjected to during the Vietnam War.

On the contrary, the visit is a tactical move and has come at a time when, on the one hand, the issue of South-China sea has gained special importance after a controversial ruling by the international court, and on the other, when diplomatic efforts directed at coaxing this region’s countries into the US-led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) are also in full swing.

The official statement issued by the White House thus reads the cardinal objective of the visit:

“This visit also will support the President’s efforts to expand opportunities for American businesses and workers to sell their products in some of the world’s fastest-growing markets. Central to this effort is the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP], the high-standards trade agreement that will unlock key markets to American exports and cement America’s economic leadership in the Asia-Pacific.”

The TPP, which was borne out of geopolitical considerations in Hillary Clinton’s State Department as the economic component of the Obama administration’s “strategic pivot” to Asia, continues to be the ‘best’ geopolitical toolbox that the U.S. has at its disposal to re-establish its soft and hard diplomatic primacy in order to compel China and others to play by the rules designed to govern international commerce in the 21st century.

The seemingly unprecedented significance Laos has today for the U.S. stems, as such, from the fact that the country is, due to its geographical location, a gateway for China’s “Silk Road” to enter Southeast Asia. Bordering Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, it is a crossroads between much of Southeast Asia as well as the gateway into East Asia.

In developing Laos’ potential as a gateway between Southeast Asia and East Asia, China has undertaken or begun planning several massive infrastructure projects across its territory including highways and railways. China has invested around US$1 billion annually in Laos in 2014 and 2015, a step up from the US$4.5 billion invested historically before 2014, according to figures from China’s Ministry of Commerce.

Thailand has also played a role in developing Laos’ infrastructure. It has invested in a China-Laos-Thailand highway connecting the three nations, as well as constructed Laos’ first rail station across the border from Nong Khai, Thailand.

Obama, therefore, is least disturbed by the prospects of facing history in Laos.

His primary motivation is to try to wean the new Laos government away from China to, as the official statement states, pave the way for an American presence in the country.

Although it is an uphill task, given that China has strong economic presence in the land-locked country, the new government, Western diplomats seem to believe, has shown some tilt towards Vietnam which, in turn, is enjoying a ‘deep engagement’ with the U.S due to its dispute with China over the control of South China sea and its participation in the TPP.

Obama is, according to this particular understanding that does not seem to have strong basis, on a mission to exploit the “tilt” to turn in to its advantage in its last bid as the U.S. president to strengthen the U.S. “rebalance.”

However, the big question is: will the people of Laos, who continue to remain victims of bombs dropped by the U.S. during the Vietnam War, be able to reconcile American investment with maimed bodies?

Even almost 50 years after the War, during which one-third of the bombs had failed to explode on impact, Laos continues to have 500 victims a year, mainly children and farmers forced to work on their contaminated fields to sustain their families.

As of 2015, despite tens of millions of dollars spent, only 1 percent of Laos’ territory had been cleared.

It is, as such, not simply the memory of the past but the threat that past continues to pose to people that Obama has to deal with during his ‘historical’ visit.

Hence the question: Will Obama’s participation in the YSEALI summit yield the desired result of attracting the youth towards integrating themselves into the networks and institutions built by and serving Western interests rather than those of Laos and Asia?

Source: Asian Correspondent

Obama Faces Grim Legacy of America’s ‘Secret War’ On Landmark Laos Trip

Barack Obama becomes the first US president to visit Laos this week, half a century after America’s “secret war” left this long-isolated nation with the unfortunate distinction of being the most heavily bombed country in history.

The US president arrives in the landlocked Southeast Asian nation on Monday to attend a regional summit, marking the last push of his presidency’s “pivot to Asia”. His visit will take him to the ancient royal capital of Luang Prabang, a UNESCO world heritage site nestled in between rolling hills and the mighty Mekong River. As he gazes at the lush tropical forest surrounding the city’s famed temples, Obama will be well aware that the idyllic landscape of Laos conceals a sinister menace, the deadly legacy of a secret war hidden to the US public and never authorised by Congress.

Between 1964 and 1973, during the Vietnam War, the US military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance over Laos – the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every 8 seconds, round the clock, for nine years. The covert operation was designed to cut North Vietnamese supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through eastern Laos to southern Vietnam. It left Laos with the unwanted tag of being the world’s most heavily bombed country in history, on a per capita basis. The “land of a million elephants” has since been referred to as the “land of a million bombs”.

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The ordnance dropped included more than 260 million submunitions released from cluster bombs, each filled with hundreds of metal shards designed to inflict maximum damage on enemy troops. An estimated 30 percent failed to explode, often cushioned by damp soil, turning large swathes of the country into a deadly minefield. These “Bombies”, as they are referred to in Laos, have caused more than 20,000 casualties since the end of the war, and continue to maim and kill to this day. Almost half the accidents have involved children, who are attracted by the munitions’ bright colours and interesting shapes.

Owning up to a tragic legacy

Obama is expected to announce an increase in funding for programmes to clear unexploded ordnance (UXO) in Laos during his trip. He will also be under pressure to provide greater acknowledgement of America’s responsibilities in blighting the former French colony, four years after his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke of the “tragic legacies of the past” during a historic visit to the Communist-run country, the first by a senior US official in 57 years.

“For many years, US contributions were far below what the scale of the problem required, or what any sense of moral obligation might warrant,” says Channapha Khamvongsa, a Lao-American campaigner who founded the Legacies of War advocacy group. “However, recent increases in US funding, coupled with contributions from other governments, mean that available resources are now beginning to approach that scale.”

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Khamvongsa has spent more than a decade raising awareness of the UXO problem in Laos, and lobbying US officials to help clear up the mess. In 2010, she took part in the first ever Congressional hearings on the legacy of Washington’s bombings in Laos. Since then, annual US funding for the UXO sector has risen from under $4 million to almost $20 million in 2016. She is hopeful Obama’s historic visit will bring about greater recognition of the devastating consequences of America’s secret war, and a durable commitment to help heal the country.

“We hope the US will take responsibility by providing a strong, multi-year commitment of funds to complete the task of clearance in all of the 14 of 17 affected provinces in Laos,” she told FRANCE 24. In addition to clearing the bombs, Khamvongsa said it was crucial American aid helped provide “mine-risk education and long-term support to victims of unexploded ordnance”.

Blighted communities

Bomb clearance and UXO education have made significant strides in recent years, bringing the annual casualty rate down from 300 in 2008 to 48 in 2014. But in the worst-hit eastern provinces, it is still distressingly common to hear of farmers inadvertently striking “bombies” while tilling a rice paddy or children mistaking a bomb for a pétanque ball, from the French bowling game that is popular with Laotians. As US Secretary of State John Kerry put it during a preparatory visit earlier this year, “50 [victims] a year is still too many”.

Despite millions of dollars spent on de-mining efforts and improved detection techniques, less than 1 percent of all estimated UXO has been cleared so far. “The scale of the enterprise is staggering,” said Kaarina Immonen, the Resident Coordinator for the United Nations Development Programme in Laos, in an interview with FRANCE 24. “One third of the country’s territory needs to be cleared, roughly 90,000 square kilometres, an area larger than several European countries,” she added.

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As well as endangering lives, Immonen said the bombs affect the long-term development of rural areas by hampering food security and the construction of infrastructure. UXO has discouraged investment and acted as a disincentive to modernise farms, because heavy machinery is likelier to trigger bombs buried underground. Poverty and a dearth of employment prospects mean unexploded ordnance is sometimes taken back to villages to use or sell as scrap metal, becoming ticking bombs in people’s homes.

“This is a major development challenge for Laos,” says Immonen. “Unexploded ordnance carries a huge human and financial cost, and generates a lack of confidence in rural communities where rice fields, roads, schools and markets are all potential hazards. Farmers simply don’t know whether the land they work on is safe, or whether they will become the next victims of UXO. Those who survive accidents are often no longer able to earn an income, leading to major repercussions for entire families.”

Beyond bomb clearance

The host of world leaders descending on the sleepy Laotian capital of Vientiane this week will include Ban Ki-moon, the first UN secretary-general to visit Laos in decades. On Wednesday, he will be attending the launch of a new Sustainable Development Goal, dubbed “Lives safe from UXO”. Later in the day, he will visit a training centre run by UXO Lao, the state-backed bomb clearance agency whose teams scour the country hunting for the dreaded “bombies”.

Immonen said UN programmes aimed to increase national ownership of development efforts, empowering local agencies such as UXO Lao to bring about change with financial and technical support from abroad. Another such agency, the National Regulatory Authority for UXO and Mine Action (NRA), has set up a database to help keep track of survivors and address their needs.

Providing life-long support to people maimed by UXO is a costly endeavour for Laos, one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. The government relies heavily on charities such as the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE), which provides limbs for amputees, including in remote villages. Hillary Clinton toured COPE’s visitor centre in Vientiane in 2012, and Obama is expected to pay a visit during his trip too.

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Campaigners are hoping any extra funding announced by the US president will take into account the needs of those already injured by blasts. “Huge sums are devoted to de-mining in the country, and obviously this is important,” said Thoummy Silamphan, an UXO victim whose own charity, the Quality of Life Association, helps disabled people find alternative forms of income. “But we must not forget the survivors, who need care and support over the long-term,” he told AFP.

Khamvongsa, of Legacies of War, said the increased awareness and funding witnessed in recent years provided “much reason for optimism”. But she agreed that assisting victims remained a major concern. “There are an estimated 12,000 survivors of UXO accidents still living in the country, many of whom will need services for the rest of their lives, including medical care, physical therapy, life-skills training and home rehabilitation to accommodate their mobility challenges,” she said. “While victim assistance has certainly improved in the past decade, […] attention to these needs has lagged behind the commitment to bomb clearance.”

Source: France24

Lotteria Opens First Laos Outlet

Lotteria will open its first outlet in Laos on Sept. 9, it announced on Sept. 4. This is the first time the South Korean fast food company has entered the Southeast Asian country.

Starting with the two-story store in the capital city of Vientiane, the fast food franchise will open a total of 18 outlets in Laos by 2020 under a partnership with Sokxay Chaleun Group, a local distribution specialist.

Lotteria already has 212 outlets in Vietnam, 34 in Indonesia, 18 in China, 8 in Myanmar, 3 in Cambodia and 2 in Kazakhstan.

Source: The Korea Herald

PM Thongloun: ASEAN to Become World’s No. 4 Economy by 2030

VIENTIANE — A new economic order will emerge by 2030, with Southeast Asia taking on a central role, Laotian Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith told business leaders in his nation’s capital on Monday.

“Studies have shown that the ASEAN economy is expected to grow at 7% per annum, with a GDP reaching $4.7 trillion in 2020, and the possibility of becoming the fourth-largest economy in the world by 2030,” Thongloun said in his opening remarks for the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit (ABIS) 2016, of which the Nikkei Asian Review is a strategic media partner.

Laos, a landlocked country with borders touching Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, is this year’s chair of ASEAN, and Thongloun will host a leaders’ meeting in Vientiane from Tuesday. The Business and Investment Summit is a parallel event, with leaders and ministers making appearances to speak to the business community.

The ASEAN gathering comes nine months after the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community and one year before the association’s 50th anniversary. The theme that the Laotians have chosen for this year’s ASEAN events is telling: “Turning Vision into Reality for a Dynamic ASEAN Community.” This reflects frustration that the bloc is heavy on ambition but light on real progress toward economic integration.

To maintain its ambitious 7% growth target, the association will need to continue to strive for seamless movement of goods, services, capital and skilled labor. “I am of the view that we should further deepen integration of services within ASEAN,” Thongloun added, “towards integration into the global supply chain in goods and services.” He called on members to work together to “further enhance ASEAN’s attractiveness as a global investment destination.”

ASEAN today has a combined gross domestic product of $2.43 trillion, making it the sixth-largest economy in the world. The Laotian leader sees that figure doubling in the next five years.

Source: Nikkei Asian Review

Obama Seeks to Curb China’s Expanding Clout, Move Beyond Past In Laos

When President Obama becomes the first American president to visit communist Laos this week, he will arrive in what is the most heavily bombed country on earth, a country where people still face a daily danger from U.S. explosives dropped during the Vietnam War more than 40 years ago.

But the Obama visit, which will include a summit with Southeast Asian leaders, is not about the past but the future, and whether the U.S. can remain an effective counterweight to China’s ever-expanding financial and military clout.

And while Mr. Obama’s “pivot to Asia” remains at best a work in progress as his tenure winds down, there are some signs that his hosts welcome the chance to hedge their bets between the superpower across the Pacific and the emerging superpower on their doorstep.

Mr. Obama, who travels to Laos from the G-20 summit hosted by China in Hangzhou, will have bilateral meetings with Lao President Bounnhang Vorachith, who was promoted from the vice presidency in January, when several other top leaders shifted, prompting speculation that Vientiane wants to ease away from financial dependence on Beijing and revitalize traditional ties with Hanoi. If there is a shift, Mr. Obama would be happy to encourage it.

“The U.S. strategic interest in Laos is to see the country be able to exert a certain degree of strategic autonomy because you don’t want (to) have something akin to the relationship between China and Cambodia,” Phuong Nguyen, analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Reuters news agency.

With U.S.-Vietnamese relations also warming in recent years, the ill will and searing memories of the Vietnam War, including the bombing campaign that spread to Laos and Cambodia, appear to be a distant memory.

“Obama’s diplomatic visit to Vientiane certainly isn’t the time, nor the place, to find value or fault in anything the USA did in Laos,” said James “Mule” Parker in an interview.

Mr. Parker, 73, was a CIA paramilitary case officer in Laos from 1971 to 1973 and authored several books about his experiences. In Laos he fought alongside anti-communist Lao Gen, Vang Pao’s thousands of ethnic Hmong guerrillas, plus the Lao army and 4,000 U.S. Special Forces-trained Thai “Tiger Soldiers” against “invading” communist Vietnamese.

“That’s ancient history,” Mr. Parker said. “We have, with this [Obama] visit, an opportunity to signal to the world our friendship and interest in an invigorated way ahead for our two countries.

If President Obama and Mr. Vorachith are able to put the past behind them, the two may find some discomfort in discussing the issue of human rights. Rights groups are already pressuring Mr. Obama to press the point.

ASEAN Summit

In Laos, Mr. Obama will meet with leaders from ASEAN nations Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Many of those countries, strongly backed by Washington, are locked in a territorial tug-of-war with China over control of the South China Sea.

Mr. Obama will also attend an East Asia Summit in Laos along with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Russia.

His China and Laos trip, almost certainly his last trip to Asia before leaving office in January, is part of “the U.S. rebalance to Asia and the Pacific,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said earlier this month.

One tricky diplomatic task facing Mr. Obama in Laos will be his first face-to-face meeting with outspoken new Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, whose tough crackdown on drug dealers and conflicting signals on the longtime U.S. alliance have unnerved U.S. officials. Mr. Obama is “certainly not going to pull any punches in raising well-documented and relevant” concerns in his meeting with Mr. Duterte, Mr. Earnest said.

Impoverished, landlocked Laos appears to be trying to leverage its geographical position to get the best possible investments and financial aid, balancing its relations among foreign political and economic interests and working those rivalries. It has a long land border with Vietnam, which lies squarely on the route for the “New Silk Road” trade strategy that is a pet project of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Billions of dollars’ worth of recent Chinese investment have poured in for construction projects, real estate, hotels, shopping malls, hydroelectric dams, anti-narcotics programs, casinos, the mining industry, agriculture and other sectors.

The U.S. offers scant investment but provides millions of dollars of financing for anti-opium crop projects, clearance of its unexploded bombs, child care, education, Mekong waterway rehabilitation and other programs.

The Pentagon’s links “with the Lao military are negligible,” said Murray Hiebert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The Lao military has agreed to work with Washington on some English-language training for its soldiers, but has not accepted the offer to send officers to U.S. staff colleges,” Mr. Hiebert wrote in February.

While analysts perceive competition between China and the U.S. in Laos, a deeper role in Vientiane’s stance has been played by Vietnam thanks to ties forged in blood during the Vietnam War.

For many years after the war, 40,000 Vietnamese soldiers were stationed in Laos, and Hanoi wielded influence over Vientiane’s foreign affairs, defense and other policies. Thailand is also actively eyeing mountainous Laos‘ hydroelectric dams, which could generate badly needed electricity for Bangkok.

Washington, meanwhile, helps clear unexploded ordnance (UXO) that remains from U.S. bombing raids during the war, peppering the countryside and still killing Laotian residents each year.

“America has long been the biggest donor to the UXO sector in Laos, and has continued year on year to increase the amount of funding that it provides to ensure [safe] land release can take place, and the victims of UXO accidents receive the support that they require,” Simon Rea, country director for England-based Mines Advisory Group in Laos, which clears UXO, said in an interview.

“From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing missions — equal to a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years — making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history,” the Washington-based monitoring group Legacies of War said in a statement.

“Up to a third of the bombs dropped did not explode, leaving Laos contaminated. Over 20,000 people have been killed or injured by UXO in Laos since the bombing ceased,” Legacies of War said.

Source: Washington Times

Obama Becomes First Sitting President to Visit Laos

VIENTIANE, Laos — This capital city, with its wide, tree-lined French colonial boulevards and old-fashioned tuk-tuk three-wheeled taxis, takes its turn in the international spotlight Monday, as Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. president to travel here.

The sleepy, landlocked country of 6.8 million may well be the final Asian stop during his presidency. Obama arrives from the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, China, for a series of Asian summit meetings during the week.

Obama plans to push for closer economic ties with Laos and Southeast Asia, and other issues of international concern.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, before he flew to Laos on Monday for the summit, warned Obama not to question him about extrajudicial killings — more than 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office two months ago.

Duterte said Obama must not throw questions at him, or else, “son of a bitch, I will swear at you in that forum,” the Associated Press reported.

“Clearly he’s a colorful guy,” Obama said at a news conference in China when asked about Duterte’s comment.

Obama said he asked his staff to determine if meeting with Duterte while in Laos would still be productive.

The main topic for discussion with Laos’ leaders is sure to be unexploded ordnance, the legacy of a massive U.S. aerial campaign during the Vietnam War that dropped 270 million cluster bombs on the then officially neutral country to support the governing royal family against a Communist insurgency.

The White House said unexploded ordnance will be a focus of Obama’s visit, and it has signaled a stronger financial commitment to help clear deadly bombs that litter large swaths of the countryside.

Activists dealing with the problem see the president’s visit as an opportunity to bring it to the world’s attention. “We’re hoping for a strong multi-year commitment to clearance and victim assistance,” said Titus Peachey, board chairman of Legacies of War, an educational and advocacy group on the impact of Vietnam-era conflict.

Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. conducted 580,000 bombing missions over Laos, partly as an effort to cut supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a North Vietnamese supply chain that ran to South Vietnam.

An estimated 80 million of the baseball-sized cluster bombs —nearly a third of those dropped — failed to detonate. Less than 1% have been cleared and more than 20,000 people have been killed or injured since the bombing ceased.

Peachey said his organization is hoping for a $25 million annual commitment from the U.S. for 10 years. “We think that would be the amount needed to really make a significant impact on the clearance task,” he said. “We think there needs to be additional funding for victim assistance. There are about 12,000 to 15,000 surviving victims of cluster bombs and other ordnance accidents living in Laos and many of them need lifelong services.”

During the Obama administration, the U.S. has dramatically increased funding for bomb clearance, from about $2.5 million a decade ago to $19.5 for 2017. Thanks to the increased funds and new survey methods to uncover ordnance, the number of annual casualties has dropped significantly, from 310 in 2008 to just 42 in 2015.

For Obama, the visit is also a chance to strengthen economic ties with the formerly estranged country. “Given this president’s commitment to reach out to countries with whom we’ve had complicated histories, we see this as a real opportunity to…build a real working partnership that can benefit both of our peoples,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said ahead of the trip.

Laos also can play a strategic role in the region as a member of ASEAN, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to help counter an increasingly assertive China in the region.

The visit “offers an opportunity for the U.S. leader to advance the so-called U.S. pivot to Asia” — Obama’s call for less emphasis on Europe, said Curtis S. Chin, former U.S. Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank and Asia Fellow at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank based in California.

“It is clear that a Chinese presence will continue to be felt in Laos and across Southeast Asia,” he said. “It is critical that U.S. engagement also continue in the region if a rules-based international order and U.S. economic leadership are to be sustained.”

China is already a major investor in Laos, with several large-scale projects in the works that range from special economic development zones at border areas to a $7 billion railway that is scheduled to link Vientiane with Kunming in southwestern China by 2020.

Source: USA Today