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Obama Looks to Cement Closer Ties to Laos

President Barack Obama toasts with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India during a dinner for the participants of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Vientiane, Laos, Sept. 7, 2016. The Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah is between the pair. Earlier Wednesday, President Barack Obama interrupted a hectic tour of China and Laos to visit Luang Prabang, a beguiling city of Buddhist temples and French villas. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

LUANG PRABANG, Laos – Aiming to cement closer ties to Laos and its people, President Barack Obama toured a Buddhist temple Wednesday and paid tribute to Lao culture after pledging the U.S. would fulfill its “profound moral and humanitarian obligation” to clean up millions of unexploded bombs.

Obama’s visit to Luang Prabang in mountainous northern Laos showcased a rich cultural and religious heritage that many in the West know little about. A UNESCO World Heritage List site along the Mekong River, the city was a hub for Buddhist faith during the Lan Xang kingdom starting in the 14th century.

Obama received a low-key reception after stepping off of Air Force One and as his motorcade snaked along a dusty, paved road through town. A small cluster of people waved from shops and open air cafes, recording the spectacle on their cellphones.

His first stop was Wat Xieng Thong, a 16th century complex of ornate gold buildings known as the “Temple of the Golden City.” In shirt sleeves and black socks, Obama looked in awe at a large golden ship adorned at the bow with dragons, staring straight at the dragon’s mouth.

“It’s gorgeous,” he said as he examined a line of golden statues.

Greeting the temple monks, Obama tried to shake hands with about 20 boys in bright orange robes, but was informed by his guide they weren’t supposed to. Instead, he posed for a photo before buying gifts for daughters Sasha and Malia at an open-air shop and sipping from a coconut.

Shining a spotlight on foreign cultures has become a signature element of Obama’s diplomacy. Taking questions later from young Southeast Asians at a town hall-style event, Obama said the U.S. could be a great force for good but has been constrained by the fact that many Americans know too little about other countries.

“If you are the United States, sometimes you can feel lazy and think, you know, we’re so big, we don’t really have to know anything about other people,” Obama said. “That’s part of what I’m trying to change.”

For Obama, the visit served as a capstone to his yearslong effort to bolster relations with Southeast Asian countries long overlooked by the United States. The outreach is a core element of his attempt to shift U.S. diplomatic and military resources away from the Middle East and to Asia in order to counter China in the region and ensure a U.S. foothold in growing markets.

On this first visit by a sitting American president, Obama has placed a particular emphasis on trying to heal wounds inflicted by the secret war the U.S. waged here as part of the broader Vietnam War.

Acknowledging the dark aftershocks of the U.S. aerial bombardment, Obama paid tribute Wednesday to survivors maimed by some 80 million unexploded bombs America dropped, and said the U.S. will do more to help to finally clean them up.

Touring a rehabilitation center in Vientiane, the capital, Obama touted his administration’s move to double spending on ordinance cleanup to roughly $90 million over three years.

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

Some 20,000 people have been killed or wounded since the war ended, Obama said after viewing displays of small rusted grenades and photos of a child missing his foot. He insisted those were “not just statistics,” but reminders of the heavy toll inflicted by war – “some of them unintended.”

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

The president did not come to apologize. Instead, he said he hoped the strengthened partnership on clearing the bombs could mark a “decisive step forward” between the U.S. and this landlocked communist nation.

Thanks to global cleanup 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 landlocked Laos, only one has a comprehensive system to care for bomb survivors.

The punishing air campaign on Laos was an effort to cut off communist forces in neighboring Vietnam. American warplanes dropped more explosives on this Southeast Asian nation than on Germany and Japan combined in World War II, a stunning statistic that Obama noted during his first day in Vientiane.

Source: The Orange County Register

New Zealand Provides $11.5 Million to Support UXO Clearance in Laos

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New Zealand will provide an extra 11.5 million dollars to help clear unexploded landmines left over in Laos following the Vietnam war.

Spotlight: Belt and Road Initiative Broadens Prospect For China-Laos Cooperation

VIENTIANE — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday called for concerted efforts between China and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member states to push forward the Belt and Road initiative at the 19th China-ASEAN summit and the summit to commemorate the 25th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue relations.

Laos: A Remote Battleground For North And South Korea

North Korea and South Korea maintain strict separation most everywhere in the world. Yet oddly, one of the few places they intersect is Laos, the small, communist nation that’s long had ties with the North and now has growing links with the South.

“As strange as it sounds, Laos is kind of this remote battleground for inter-Korean politics or competition and diplomacy,” says Sokeel Park, research director for Liberty in North Korea, a private South Korean organization that assists North Korean refugees.

Laos rarely receives international attention. But it’s in the spotlight this week as it hosts a gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, which has drawn many heads of state, including President Obama.

To find evidence of Laos’ longstanding ties to North Korea, look no further than the dining establishments. Laos hosts a North Korean-run restaurant in the heart of Vientiane, the capital of Laos. These North Korean restaurants are part of the regime’s money-making operations, a way for Pyongyang to earn hard currency abroad, since sanctions have increasingly cut it off from the rest of the world.

“North Korea has had fairly close relations with Laos for several decades. They’re both countries that [are] at least nominally socialist or communist states,” Park says.

Park’s work includes some dealings with Laos. It’s one of the countries North Korean defectors sometimes pass through on their way to a final destination, like South Korea.

Laos is one of the countries in Southeast Asia that North Korean refugees will go to out of China,” he explains. The vast majority of defectors cross from North Korea into China, rather than attempting to cross the heavily guarded inter-Korean border.

A place for business, a route for defectors

So the North Korean-Laos relationship cuts both ways. It allows them to do business together, but it also means that North Korean defectors look at Laos as way to get out, and they know Laos is willing to look the other way.

And in recent months, South Korea has stepped up efforts to drive a wedge between Laos and North Korea.

North Korea’s nuclear test and missile tests brought a new round of international sanctions this spring. It’s also been an opportunity for South Korea to court Laos.

South Korea has been sending diplomats, increasing communication and signed a new military-to-military agreement. All in hopes Laos will get tougher on its North Korean partner.

We think Laos and other countries previously friendly with North Korea have turned around considerably after the U.N. sanctions went into effect, and that they’re now supporting South Korea’s policies,” says South Korea’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Cho June-hyuck.

But the ties with North Korea endure. Laos is believed to be one of the few places left where North Korea can send its labor to earn cash. North Korean diplomats continue to visit Laos. And North Korean still runs these Pyongyang restaurants, playing patriotic North Korean karaoke songs.

Haeryun Kang contributed to this story, from Seoul.

Source: NPR

Blind and Missing Both Hands, Bombing Victim Navigates Life in Laos

VIENTIANE, Laos — Phongsavath Souliyalat was walking home from school in his tiny village of Hin Hub, a few hours north of the capital of Vientiane, when a friend found a metal ball on the ground.

The Bombing of Laos: By the Numbers

2 million tons – the amount of ordnance dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973, according to Legacies of War, an advocacy and education group. This amounts to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours per day, for nine years.

270 million – the number of cluster bombs that were dropped on Laos during this period.

80 million — the estimated number of cluster bombs that did not detonate, most of which are still buried in farmland.

210 million — how many more bombs were dropped on Laos than were dropped on Iraq in 1991, 1998, and 2006 combined. In fact, Laos is the most heavily bombed country per capita in history.

20,000 — the number of people who have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance in Laos.

50 — the number of casualties per year, down from 310 per year in 2008. Forty percent of the victims are children.

$4.9 million — the average amount per year the U.S. has spent on clearing unexploded ordnance in Laos, from 1993 to 2016.

$30 million — the amount the U.S. will spend on clearing unexploded ordnance each year for the next three years.

 

Source: ABC News

Plan For Logistics Hub in Laos

Aim is to speed up flow of goods into Asean, with hub serving as central node for goods from outside grouping.

A group of Singapore businessmen is hoping to turn Laos’ geographic location from a weakness to a strength by boosting its connectivity to the rest of the region.

In Laos, Obama Bashes Trump For Being An Isolationist

President Obama and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte met informally Wednesday night before a gala dinner at a summit in Laos, breaking the ice a bit after Mr. Duterte called him a “son of a bitch.”

Their brief meeting took place in a holding room before the dinner, Philippine officials told The Associated Press. There was no immediate confirmation from the White House.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Pefecto Yasay said the short meeting “springs from the fact the relationship between the Philippines and the United States is firm, very strong. The basis for this relationship is historical and both leaders realize this.”

The White House canceled a formal meeting between the two leaders Tuesday after Mr. Duterte’s outburst. He was reacting to reports that Mr. Obama intended to confront him about extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers in the Philippines.

At the dinner in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, Mr. Obama and Mr. Duterte sat near each other but didn’t interact. The Philippine leader sat next to Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, and they appeared to be enjoying each others’ company, clinking their glasses of red wine several times, reporters said.

“They seemed to be hitting it off,” according to a pool reporter traveling with Mr. Obama. “Medvedev was laughing at things Duterte said.”

Earlier Wednesday, Mr. Obama took a not-so-subtle shot at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in Laos, lamenting to a foreign audience that the U.S. will be “left behind” if America turns to isolationism instead of embracing Asian cultures.

Speaking to Asian youth leaders in the mountain town of Luang Prabang, Mr. Obama didn’t mention Mr. Trump by name, but he pushed back against the Republican nominee’s proposals such building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and temporarily banning Muslim immigrants.

“We have to be able to promote principles that rise above any individual religion, nationality, race,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s what we’ve been trying to promote — not always successfully. Not everybody in America agrees with me on this, by the way. I’ll leave it at that.”

Mr. Obama reminisced fondly about growing up in Indonesia, and chided Americans for a tendency to ignore what’s going on in the world.

“If you are the United States, sometimes you can feel lazy and think, you know, ‘we’re so big, we don’t really have to know anything about other people,’” Mr. Obama said. “That’s part of what I’m trying to change, because this is actually the region that’s going to grow faster than anyplace else in the world.”

He added, “If we aren’t here interacting and learning from you, and understanding the culture of the region, then we’ll be left behind.”

Mr. Obama is promoting a free-trade deal with Asia-Pacific nations, and predicted Congress will approve the agreement after the November elections. Both Mr. Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The president said ethnic tensions and conflicts with new immigrants surface in the U.S. particularly “when the economy is not doing well, and so people feel stressed.

“And typically, when people feel stressed, they turn on others who don’t look like them,” Mr. Obama said. “So we have to fight against that.”

Source: Washington Times