Vietnam, US set new tone on dioxin war legacy

BIEN HOA, Vietnam, Oct 2 (Reuters) Doctors warn people living near the Bien Hoa military airport not to drink the water, eat the fish or grow fruit and vegetables because of wartime dioxin poisoning.

Brain-damaged babies and children with shortened limbs and other physical deformities are still being brought to hospitals for specialised care, four decades after the United States sprayed Vietnam with the highly toxic defoliant.

In recent months, Vietnam and the United States have started to overcome years of frustration in both governments about how to deal with environmental and health effects of the poison code-named ''agent orange''.

Americans and Vietnamese say they are perhaps just months from planning environmental clean-up and containment of dioxin, beginning at the former US air base in the central city of Danang.

''Assisting Vietnam with this issue will help clear the conscience of the US government,'' said Le Ke Son, director of ''The Committee 33'' working on impacts of an estimated 70 million litres of toxic chemicals used from 1961 to 1971 by the US military and the South Vietnam government it supported.

The war ended on April 30, 1975 when communist North Vietnam took Saigon, re-named it Ho Chi Minh City, and unified the Southeast Asian country.

Hanoi and Washington restored diplomatic ties in 1995 and they are now cementing a friendship founded on growing trade and business ties as Vietnam introduces market reforms.

But the consequences of the toxic war remain a painful sore in the relationship that both governments and non-governmental organisations dearly wish to repair.

''There has been a lot of work on the issue,'' said Michael Marine, US ambassador to Hanoi. ''The question is very complex. What you do is in part driven by how you intend to use the site, the land, the cost for the clean-up.'' HOT SPOTS Scientists identify coastal Danang, Vietnam's fourth largest city with about 1 million people, the south-central town of Phu Cat in Binh Dinh province and Bien Hoa in the southern province of Dong Nai as ''hot spots'', wartime bases where the chemicals were stored and spilled.

Bien Hoa is a bustling city of 500,000 people about 40 km north of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam's industrial heart.

It is a typical Vietnamese city, teeming with motorbikes, construction sites and Internet cafes alongside displays of communist hammer and sickle symbols and party slogans.

But its military airport and surrounding lakes, ponds and land are toxic. The Vietnam military plans to clean up the site.

A study by Vietnamese and Canadian scientists of Hatfield environmental consultants in West Vancouver, British Columbia, measured dioxin levels in the soil that are hundreds of times higher than is acceptable in other countries.

''My dream is to conclude work on these hot spots in the next five years,'' said Son, a scientist at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment who serves on a joint Vietnam-US panel of technical experts who met for the first time in June.

Washington has ruled out paying compensation but is willing to share technical advice with Vietnamese counterparts.

The non-governmental Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation provides expertise and the Ford Foundation, a US philanthropic group, has made grants for environmental and health research.

''Part of the reason we are making these grants is so that they can develop a more accurate view of the nature of the threat,'' says Charles Bailey, Ford Foundation representative in Vietnam.

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