Founder of VVMF to visit Vietnam

Washington (VNA) – The founder and President of the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial Fund (VVMF), Jan Scruggs, will visit Vietnam to step up efforts
to address more than 350,000 tonnes of potentially deadly ordnance believed
to be scattering in Vietnam ’s land after the war.

He will be accompanied by a 20-strong delegation, mostly Vietnam veterans,
according to mySanAntonio.com, the Web site of the San Antonio Express-News, the
online voice of South Texas .

The Vietnam veterans’ tour from January 11-17 will begin in Hanoi with planned
stops in the central provinces of Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, the central city of
Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City .

Scruggs was quoted by mySanAntonio.com as saying that in 2001, the VVMF worked with
Quang Tri to create Project RENEW to prevent injuries through public education and
ordnance removal.

The Project RENEW - "Restore the Environment and Neutralise the Effects of the War",
first named as "Restore the use of land to the Vietnamese through Education and
Neutralization of the Effects of the War", recently was awarded a congressional
defence appropriation of 1 million USD to continue its work, the VVMF founder said.

Since the VVMF sent its first delegation to visit Vietnam in 1995, it has taken
various activities to back the US-Vietnam ties.

The fund has worked to pull the attention of politicians, the public and
non-governmental organisations in the US to projects to address war consequences in
Vietnam, especially the clearance of unexploded bombs and ordnance left from the
war, like project RENEW in Quang Tri province.-Enditem