Clinton makes historic visit to Laos

The Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today made ​​a brief visit to Laos, the first by the Viet Nam a chief U.S. diplomat since 1955, Laotian state radio reported. Clinton met in Vientiane, the capital, with Prime Minister of Laos, Thongsing Thammavong, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Thongloun Sisoulith, Efe said. According to the Thai press, Clinton pushed for the authorities in Laos further studies of the impact of plans to build hydro dam in a stretch of the Mekong, a project of 3,600 million dollars that have criticized the neighboring nations and across the river before it flows into the sea, Vietnam. Laos Prime Minister said the Xayaburi dam can be built only with the consent of the neighboring countries, according to U.S. officials quoted by the online edition of Thai newspaper Bangkok Post . The trip to Laos also included a view to a Buddhist temple and center COPE (Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise), a nongovernmental organization that provides and prosthetic assistance to victims of mines and bombs. United States cooperates with Laos in the task of removing the explosive legacy of the war which ended in 1975 with the victory of Communist forces and, according to the Information Centre of Artillery without Detonate, amounts to some 80 million shells and bombs of different sizes. Both countries also cooperate in the search and repatriation of remains of U.S. soldiers missing during the war. The last time a head of U.S. diplomacy visited Laos was in 1955 when John Foster Dulles made ​​a brief stop in this country to mark the establishment of a military mission in support of monarchical government Laotian Army then. After a few hours in Vientiane, Clinton left for Cambodia, where he will bilateral meetings with counterparts from several Asian countries that participate in the regional security forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to be held on Friday in Phnom Penh. The U.S. diplomat visited Vietnam on Tuesday, from Japan and Mongolia.ASEAN consists of Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The ASEAN Regional Forum, established in 1994 as a way to solve disputes through dialogue regional integration prior to the ten countries, plus Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, South Korea, North Korea, USA, India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Sri Lanka, Timor Oriental and European Union (EU).