Top US commander holds rare talks in Laos
HANOI - US Pacific forces commander Admiral Dennis Blair held talks with Lao officials Monday on a rare US visit to a communist
state with which Washington's relations remain dogged by the legacy of the Vietnam War.
Blair held a morning meeting with minister in the president's office Soubanh Srithirath, who heads Laos's drug control
commission, ahead of afternoon talks with Deputy Defence Minister Ay Souliyaseng and Foreign Minister Somsavat
Lengsavad, an embassy official said.
The US commander wanted to express his appreciation to the Lao authorities for their assistance with Washington's efforts to
fully account for servicemen still listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War, the official said.
Of the 2,583 posted as missing in southeast Asia when the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the remains of 592 have been
recovered, 149 of them from Laos.
But 1,991 still remain unaccounted for, 420 of them in Laos.
During a landmark visit to Laos's communist ally, Vietnam, in November, US President Bill Clinton vowed the search would
continue until "every fallen hero" had been traced.
Drugs are another major US concern in Laos, which remains the world's third largest opium producer after Afghanistan and
Myanmar, according to diplomats.
The communist authorities have vowed to step up their drug control efforts as part of wider moves by the 10-member
Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
US relations with Laos are still dogged by a sense of guilt about Washington's precipitate exit from its secret sideshow to the
Vietnam War, in particular its perceived abandonment of anti-communist militia allies it recruited among the Hmong ethnic
minority.
The appointment of a new US ambassador in Vientiane remains blocked in the US Senate 18 months after the previous one
departed amid increasingly vocal attacks on the communist regime's human rights record by the large Lao emigre community in
the United States and their backers in Congress.
And the disappearance of two Hmong-Americans on the Lao-Thai border in 1999 provides an additional irritant to relations.
Embassy officials say Washington is still keen for information about the whereabouts of Houa Ly, 56, and Michael Vang, 37,
after running newspaper advertisements in Laos and Thailand last November.
As a condition for running the US adverts in Laos's tightly controlled official press, the communist authorities insisted on running
parallel advertisements of their own.
Those adverts charged that the two men had made no application to enter Laos legally and appealed for information so that
they could be put on trial for suspected illegal entry.
Lao officials charge that Hmong-Americans are still engaged in running money and weapons to armed opposition groups in the
northern mountains 26 years after the US Central Intelligence Agency ended its arms drops.
Blair had been due to travel on to Hanoi later Monday for the third leg of an Indochina tour that has also taken him to
Cambodia.
But embassy officials said he would remain in the Lao capital overnight as Vietnamese defence ministry officials said the Hanoi
leg of his trip had been cancelled without explanation by the US side.
Agence France Presse - January 15, 2001.
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