Vietnam and U.S. Meet...

US, Vietnam open annual Agent Orange meetings

Vietnam urged the U.S. to do speed funding for Agent Orange victims today at start of the fourth annual meeting on joint efforts to clean up areas that American forces contaminated with the toxic herbicide during the Vietnam War.

U.S. troops sprayed Agent Orange on jungles to deprive Vietnamese troops of ground cover. Vietnam says from 1 to 4 million of its citizens may have suffered serious health consequences because of the poisonous spraying.

So far, clean-up efforts have focused on the airport at Danang, a former U.S. air base in central Vietnam where American troops stored, mixed and loaded Agent Orange onto planes during the Vietnam War.

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Studies by a Canadian environmental consultant have identified seven Agent Orange hot spots, but Vietnam says there are as many as two dozen that need to be cleaned up.

As this week's meetings opened, the Vietnamese side urged the U.S. to speed up disbursement of money to help the disabled, saying they weren't getting help quickly enough.

"We all know that exposure to dioxin is the cause of serious suffering to the victims," said Nguyen Xuan Cuong, Vietnam's vice minister of natural resources and the environment............Read Rest Here