AFP. 22 January 2002. Laos gets new monument to Vietnamese military support.
HANOI -- A new monument to Laos's close military ties with key ally Vietnam has been opened in the landlocked communist state's northern mountains, Vietnam's official media said Tuesday. The 16 metre (50 foot) high structure in Udomxay province is Laos's third memorial to the massive Vietnamese military support which brought its communist regime to power shortly after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. A 3.5 metre (nearly 12 foot) high statue of a Vietnamese soldier stands alongside a Lao comrade on a 1.5 metre (five foot) plinth beneath the huge canopy, the official Vietnam News Agency said. The deputy head of the Vietnamese army's General Political Department, Lieutenant General Le Van Han, joined Lao Labour Minister Somphan Phengkhammi for the inauguration ceremony Sunday. Vietnamese military support not only brought the Lao government to power but also put down an armed rebellion by royalist exiles and minority hill tribes in the late 1970s and early 1980s which threatened its hold. Officially Vietnam pulled out its troops alongside its withdrawal from Cambodia in 1989. But diplomats say Vietnamese troops were active fighting Hmong rebels in the northern mountains as recently as in 2000. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
