Clinton visits Laos in historic trip to see deadly legacy of Vietnam War

Hillary Clinton confronted a painful legacy of the Vietnam War yesterday as she made the first visit to Laos by a US secretary of state in nearly six ­decades.

The US dropped more bombs on the South-east Asian nation than it did on Germany and Japan combined in the Second World War, in a futile effort to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to the south.

More than three decades after the Vietnam War’s end, the country is still struggling to rid itself of an estimated 80 million cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance that kill and maim up to 100 people a year.

“Here in Laos, the past is always with us,” Mrs Clinton said after touring a centre that makes prosthetic devices for victims and whose visitor centre includes hanging sculptures made from dangling cluster bomblets and from worn-out prosthetic limbs.

Clinton’s roughly four-hour stop in the one-party Communist state was the first by a US secretary of state since John Foster Dulles visited the capital Vientiane in 1955.