The US side pledged to strive to maintain the budget for Agent Orange/dioxin treatment programmes in Vietnam in 2013 at the same level as in 2012.
Ha Huy Thong, Deputy Head of the National Assembly’s Committee for External Relations said so on April 19 while talking with the Vietnam News Agency correspondent in Washington DC about his meeting with US administration and congress representatives on the issue.
In 2012, the US provided 44 million USD for Vietnam to treat AO-contaminated areas in central Da Nang city.
The US side continued to display its goodwill to support and work with Vietnam in overcoming AO/dioxin consequences, said Thong, who is also Chairman of the Vietnam-US Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin.
He said US representatives showed their positive attitude towards the programmes to deal with the toxic chemicals used by the US during the war in Vietnam. They admitted that this is a complicated and time-consuming issue that needs two-side efforts.
AO hot spots in Vietnam’s southern city of Bien Hoa are scheduled for the treatment programme in the coming time.
The Vietnamese side has provided the US side with new statistical data on 29 AO hot spots in the country’s cities and provinces.
The Aspen Institute, a partner in the Vietnam-US Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin, estimates that Vietnam needs around 410 million USD to deal with the consequences of the toxic dioxin in the 2012–2017 period.
From 1961-1971, US troops sprayed more than 80 million litres of toxins - 44 million litres of which were AO that contained nearly 370kg of dioxin - over a quarter of southern Vietnam.
As a result, around 3.5–4 million Vietnamese people were exposed to AO/dioxin.
On April 18, Thong said his group met with US members of Congress and officials, representatives from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as well as UN representatives and organisations helping to rid the country of AO.
Earlier on April 16, the Vietnam-US Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin organised the first round-table conference on AO/dioxin in Washington DC since it was founded in 2007.
Source: VNA