 Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Elise Grande. I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. It was established by the US Congress in 1984 as an independent public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We're very honored at USIP to host the second annual dialogue on war legacies and peace in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This dialogue is the largest gathering in Washington of governmental and non-governmental leaders that are concerned with US policy towards what President Biden has described on his recent visit to Hanoi as one of the most consequential regions in the world today. This event began as a flagship activity of the Institute's war legacies and reconciliation initiative. It was launched in 2021. Current events have made this gathering particularly significant. Our event is one of the first public events between our countries following the announcement of the US-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership on Sunday. We congratulate President Biden and General Secretary Nguyen Phu Thuong on this historic agreement, which can be seen as a combination of one of the longest reconciliation processes between states in the entire modern period. We also recognize that this achievement would not have been possible without the efforts of many individual Americans and Vietnamese who have made post-war reconciliation their life's work. We welcome our colleagues from the embassies of Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, as well as the visitors who are joining us today who have been sponsored by the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency, which is actually holding its own annual technical talks later today. I'm delighted to have the honor of introducing our two distinguished speakers who will be here for the first part of today's plenary. Dr. Mira Rapphooper is the special assistant to the President of the United States and senior director for East Asia and Oceania Affairs at the National Security Council. Madam Huang Ti-Teng Nha is the minister and deputy chief of mission of the Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Please join us on the stage. And thank you to colleagues at USIP for having us today for this incredibly important conversation. As Lisa has just indicated, it could not be more timely. Before I delve into my opening remarks, in which I hope to just share a little bit with you about the historic trip that President Biden just took to Vietnam to unveil our path-breaking, comprehensive strategic partnership with Vietnamese friends, I want to start by thanking Vietnamese friends, in particular our ambassador here in Washington and DCM Nha herself. Presidential trips always take a village to pull off. But as we'll speak about today, we had an extraordinary diplomatic opening with Vietnam that required a true all-hands-on-deck approach to make sure that we were able to achieve a visit befitting the aspirations that we had for it. And we worked so closely together to make sure that that was possible in recent weeks. So it's wonderful to be on the other side of it, get to share a little bit about it with you all today, but to be sitting next to a great friend and colleague to do it. So our comprehensive strategic partnership with Vietnam that President Biden and General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong announced on Sunday was the product in many ways of decades, years of reconciliation, exactly as Lisa indicated, but also the product of a particular moment that all of a sudden seemed like it was upon us before we could even grasp the enormity of the situation. As Lisa indicated, and you all know so well, the US-Vietnam relationship has taken many twists and turns in the 50 years of the post-war period. As we discussed with Vietnamese counterparts many times during the President's trip to Vietnam a few days ago, in many ways, there was an incredible potential for partnership between the US and Vietnam in the immediate post-war period when Ho Chi Minh reached out many times to US presidents to write and to share his aspirations for full cooperation with the United States and a desire to draw closer as partners. But of course it's lost on no one in this audience that a couple of decades later our relationship was an incredibly painful place as we were ribboned by conflict and in many ways the decades subsequent to that were all defined by our reconciliation process, which of course culminated with diplomatic normalization in 1995. Following normalization, there were a number of key milestones to include our launch of a comprehensive partnership in 2013. President Obama's incredibly important trip at the end of his administration. And when President Biden took office in 2021, I can say as someone who has been privileged to be at the National Security Council since the early days of this administration that it has always been an aspiration of ours to upgrade our relationship with Vietnam, the fitting of the moment that we are in. Of course, that upgrade is very much about the way that we see US-Vietnam relations, but it's also about the fact that this administration is incredibly focused on the Indo-Pacific as a region, has put out an Indo-Pacific strategy that aspires for a free, open, connected, resilient, and secure region and has invested a great deal of time, effort, and energy into modernizing and investing in a wide variety of alliances and partnerships around the region. So whether you're talking about the modernization of the US-Japan alliance, USROK alliance, US-Australia alliance, US-Philippines alliance, or newer multilateral arrangements like the Quad and AUKUS, and of course, our enduring and profound commitment to and respect for ASEAN centrality, this administration has made its business to be laser focused on allies and partners as the bedrock of its efforts to bring about that vision for the Indo-Pacific that we seek to achieve. And we have always hoped throughout this process that an upgraded partnership with Vietnam would be a part of that. We recognized just a few months ago that we might have an opportunity to go even farther and even faster than we would have previously expected. I can say personally that when we thought about upgrading our relationship with Vietnam until very recently, we all on both sides of the Pacific expected that we were looking at an upgrade to a strategic partnership, which would have been the natural progression and certainly the way that partnership succession has typically worked in the Vietnamese system. But we recognized due to a couple of really important exchanges amongst our top diplomats and leaders that we had an opportunity to do even more than that. And a couple of particularly important meetings led us to recognize that the strong desire of President Biden and General Secretary Chung to meet meant that we might also be able to do more than we thought was possible. And with a little bit of exploration, both sides did land on the idea that we should seek a comprehensive strategic partnership in an unprecedented double upgrade by Vietnam of the United States as partner. As we prepared to pursue this new step, we thought that this gap would not be a gap that we are very proud of and the high value of our partners and our colleagues in Vietnam. And to see the potential of our relationship, I think one of the reasons is that we have reached the level of our relationship that we never had before. I think this is one of the main purposes of our partnership. As you can see, all of the agreements that we have made and the joint efforts we have made have been reflected that the United States and Vietnam have been working together in the relationship between the United States and Vietnam in this new step, in this new step, and both teams and drove us to the very successful visit that you saw just a few days ago. Headlines of our factory, of course, include an unprecedented decision to form a partnership with Vietnam in the technology space and in particular to invest in Vietnam's semiconductor ecosystem with a strong desire by the United States ecosystem with a strong desire by the United States to see Vietnam be a leading regional technology player in the years to come and increasingly a leading global player. Other deliverables include initiatives to help Vietnam build its workforce to harness the incredible potential of its educated, young, and dynamic population and its growing economy. Of course, there are a number of other features that you would expect to see, whether that's our close partnership on climate change, on health security, our long-standing and very important security ties, and our people-to-people connections, which in many ways remain the lifeblood of our partnership. But even as we designed a partnership, a sort of plan for a CSP that would be fully fitting of a modern, dynamic Vietnam and all that we believe Vietnam can achieve in the region, and fitting of the U.S.'s aspirations in the Indo-Pacific in the 21st century, I do want to emphasize the importance and continuing role that war legacy and war remembrance played in this very important trip. Throughout our planning, we talked about the fact that it would be incredibly important to memorialize the work that our teams in the United States and Vietnam have done tirelessly for decades, even preceding diplomatic recognition to get us to the place where we are able to announce this highest tier of partnership in 2021. Of course, that includes continued tireless work to address unexploded ordinance, to address dioxin remediation, to provide support for people with disabilities, and to do the day-to-day work of remembrance and reconciliation that has allowed us to build trust and mutual understanding that now doesn't just extend to the war legacy part of our relationship, but really permeates all aspects of the partnership. On the President's trip to Vietnam, one of the most moving monuments that I had the privilege of experiencing was the President's visit to the National Assembly, where he met with the Speaker of the National Assembly and also had the privilege of meeting a number of veterans of the Vietnam War, both U.S. and Vietnamese veterans. One of the most poignant moments of the entire visit was when two U.S. veterans of the war returned to the Vietnamese veteran present his own diary that he had kept during the war, rebound and refinish so that he could have memories of his own experience and his family could have memories of his own experience for decades to come. And I think we saw both of our leaders sort of catch their breath a little bit in the poignance of that moment, and that was such an important reminder of the fact that even as we continue to modernize our partnership and extend it into all of these incredible new areas, that work remains in many ways the beating heart of what got us to where we are. I will note in closing my opening remarks that I think war legacy remembrance was a hugely important aspect of why President Biden personally wanted to pursue the CSP with Vietnam. As he said many times of the course of his meetings with all of Vietnam's top four leaders, he has some close personal friendships that have led to his understanding of Vietnam and the incredibly important role that U.S.-Vietnam relations could play in helping to make for a more peaceful and stable Indo-Pacific. And for him those are encapsulated by his friendships with special envoy for climate John Kerry, of course former senator and Secretary of State, who accompanied him on the trip and was there for every moment of his very important program. And they also of course include his longstanding and deeply valued friendship with John McCain. Who he honored by placing a wreath at the marker in Hanoi where Senator McCain's aircraft was shot down during the Vietnam War. So I think as a staffer it was very moving to see the significance that that war remembrance played in bringing this particular president to this particular moment where he had the privilege of sitting side by side with the general secretary and each of Vietnam's top leaders to survey how far we've come and how much potential we have in the years and decades ahead. I'll stop there. Mira, thank you. Madam Minister. Well first of all I'd like to thank the USIP for inviting me to this important dialogue which is which has become a very remarkable initiative to promote reconciliation, peace and mutual understanding. And thank you very much, Mira, for telling us about what happened in Hanoi a few days ago. Well, my remarks will focus more on addressing war legacy issue. We believe that addressing war legacy issue has been one of the keys to normalization process between Vietnam and the United States and also to the development of our bilateral relationship. Enormous efforts have been made from both the United States and Vietnam to overcome the consequences of the war over the last over three decades and the close cooperation between Vietnam and the United States. Governments and people in this area has contributed significantly to building trust and understanding making two former enemies friends and partners today. Mira has mentioned earlier about the big event in Hanoi a few days ago, three days ago, when our two leaders announced the establishment of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for Peace, Cooperation and Sustainable Development during President Biden's visit. A addressing war legacy is one of the key pillar of the newly established partnership as it has always been in Vietnam e-resilations over the last three decades. The leaders of Vietnam and the United States reaffirmed a very strong commitment to solve the consequences of war, including remediating dioxin cleaning up unexploded islands, supporting persons with disabilities and accounting for missing and fallen soldiers from the war. Also during the visit, Mira also mentioned about the event at the National Assembly where veteran American and Vietnamese veteran Australian their work time varies. And we have just learned that Vietnamese side also received a very important information from the US side about 500 soldiers which will be very helpful for us to identify our fallen soldiers. And the cooperation on war legacy are meaningful to Vietnam-US partnership and also for many of our families, our families, dusting angels, the pain of war. Let me share with you a story of a lady who wrote a letter to my ambassador a few months ago, her father was an Air Force major and in 2015, with a lot of efforts and assistance from the local government and people of Thanh Hoa province, the joint excavation team found her father's remains and repatriated him in 2017. This June she came back to Vietnam to celebrate her father's birthday and she planted a piece tree in the formal excavation site. She also gave 50 rice bags to the local Buddhist temple to commemorate the 15 years of the Paris Accord and she told us that she saw her father in her tree the first night when she returned to Hanoi, she returned to Vietnam. And the story, this story and many other stories my colleagues in embassy had chance to hear remind us that much needed to be done to heal the wounds of war in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and also in the United States. We appreciate all the cooperation efforts to address this issue whether it's from government or organizations or individuals. And on this occasion we would like to suggest following points. First, we would like to call for the US Congress and administration to allocate more resources for addressing war legacy issues in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, particularly on unexploded ordinance, cleans up and risk awareness education as well. Dowsing remediation support for persons affected by Agent Orange and accounting for foreign soldiers and bringing them home. We look forward to further support for building a data center to identify Vietnamese MIAs and improve our DNA analysis capabilities. And second, in addition to addressing war legacies, we hope that there would be more cooperation between the United States and Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia in economic trade investment, infrastructure development, connectivity and respond to climate change through the Mekong US partnership or many other bilateral and regional initiatives. We believe that as a Pacific power, the United States and other partners can contribute to turning into China from a formal back to field into a place of opportunities and help for development and cooperation. So once again, I would like to thank USIP for this very important dialogue. Thank you for your attention. Madam Minister, thank you. Dr. Rep Hooper, thank you. With your permission we'd like to ask you just a few questions. Fifty years ago our two countries were at war. We were enemies. And two days ago we became the highest form of friends you can be between states. Why did it happen this year? Why weren't we able to do this five years ago, ten years ago? Why couldn't we do it right after the war? What is so special about 2023 that we have achieved this? Let me share what I think. I think what Vietnam and the United States have just achieved is remarkable. The reconciliation process is not easy at all. It takes many years for many other examples. It may take many decades to hear the word of war, to overcome the consequences of war. And in order to have what we have a few days ago, that a lot of efforts have been made from both sides, from the United States and Vietnam. So I think that's already remarkable. You can say it's long, but it might not be too long compared to what would have happened. It's already very remarkable. I'll simply elaborate on GCM NAS remarks, which I absolutely agree to say that I think there are a few different layers of factor. And you'll excuse me for bucketing them. I'm a recovered political scientist. So this is the way my brain operates. But on one level, you have the structural circumstances of international politics. The Vietnam War occurred during a very particular time at the height of the Cold War. The Cold War ended, which provided ample opportunity for us to look towards a new future, including through diplomatic normalization. But even before the end of the Cold War, we had started at the sub-national level a lot of this really important reconciliation and healing work between our countries. And now, of course, structurally in the 21st century, we live in a world that looks nothing like the Cold War. It has many challenges of its own, but the sort of structural factors in international relations are completely different. Second, as my friend in college just indicated, over the course of those five decades, you have had tireless work in both of our countries, both on the government-to-government level, the NGO level, the individual level, and many more to put us in a place where we could arrive at a partnership breakthrough like the one that we did just a few days ago through this tireless work that not only addresses the specific legacies of war in all of these painful areas like dioxin remediation, unexploded ordinance, people with disabilities falling and missing shoulders, east of which is crucial. But through those activities, genuinely builds a stronger foundation for a future relationship because our countries understand each other better and build habits of cooperation that can extend to other areas. But the third factor I would point to is individual leadership. I don't think we would have arrived at the particular moment that we saw on Sunday without the leadership of this general secretary in Vietnam and this president here in the United States, both of whom were committed to meeting and committed to taking their partnership to a historic place. Even as we worked in recent months to figure out how exactly we would get them together and what exactly it would look like, that determination was clear and with fears. So in many ways, all of this work that has gone on tirelessly between our countries for years was helping to lay the foundation now in the 21st century in which these two particular leaders could take this historic step. Do you think the contribution of the new friendship, the new comprehensive strategic friendship between our countries is going to mean for stability and for peace and for prosperity in the region? I'm happy to take this one first. We see the U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership as an absolute force for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific full stop. We think this partnership is going to be incredibly important in the service of those goals and believe that's true across a number of different dimensions. But I think the different ways in which we see that being true are evident in our joint statement and our fact sheet and in the ways that our leaders interacted in Hanoi just a couple of days ago. On the one hand and at the most basic level, the president reiterated a number of times and we believe fervently that a strong unified, prosperous and resilient Vietnam is fundamentally in the interest of the Indo-Pacific and in the interest of the United States and that is part of the reason we are so committed to Vietnam and Vietnam's success. You can see that in our enthusiasm for partnering with Vietnam in the technology space where we think Vietnam has a huge goal to play in resilient supply chains and in the technologies of the future. And we believe that the partnership that we announced this past weekend is just the beginning of much stronger cooperation in this space. We believe that Vietnam has incredible, both realized and future potential as a climate leader in the region taking some really bold and important steps that can inspire and rally cooperation from others in the Indo-Pacific as well. We obviously believe that we see eye to eye in a number of important strategic areas, one that was on full display and discussed many times was of course the importance of rule of law, freedom of navigation and peace and stability in the South trying to see where our leaders are deeply aligned in their views and in their perspectives. And all in all, we believe that the United States and Vietnam have similar approaches to the way that we engage with the region and the way that we approach our partnerships. As already mentioned, the president, the vice president and all of our top leadership are deeply committed to ASEAN's strength and ASEAN's centrality. And of course, it goes without saying that Vietnam is incredibly so. But we also see our partnership with Vietnam as part of a broader overlapping set of interlinking partnerships that are emerging throughout the region, all of which we think provide stabilizing forces. So I've already rattled off a number of the important alliances and partnerships that the United States has pursued under the Biden administration in recent years. It's also worth noting that Vietnam is pursuing some really historic partnerships of its own, whether that's with the Republic of Korea, with India, with Japan. And we see a lot of that work as overlapping and aiming towards similar sets of goals, many of which for us are reflected in our Indo-Pacific strategy. So it goes without saying, I think, from where we sit that this is a partnership for good, for prosperity, for peace. And the fact of vaulting it to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership means, from where we sit, that more and more possibility will open for what we can do together. Let me add some few things. When we upgrade the partnership to CSP level, comprehensive strategic partnership level, we believe that the purpose of the partnership is for peace, cooperation, and sustainable development, nothing else. That's very clear. And this is the purpose of our partnership. And if you read the chart statement of our, between our two leaders, you can see that the very big component of the chart statement is about development, about economic cooperation. Vietnam, as many other countries in the region, we very much look forward to further engagement of the United States in the region in terms of economic and development. And that's why we support many initiatives by the U.S. administration to further engage economically with the region and with ASEAN. Another point I would like to hear is between ASEAN and the United States relationship. ASEAN and the United States have also upgraded the partnership to comprehensive strategic partnership. And our bilateral relationship would like to contribute to further develop the relationship between ASEAN and the United States. That's what we think that how our bilateral relationship can benefit to the region and to the one large. Historically, if you look at post-war period between countries that have fought and if we date modernity from the French Revolution, one of the astonishing features of the relationship between Vietnam and the United States is that it represents the longest sustained reconciliation process in 250 years. An astonishing journey for our country and an astonishing journey for your country. Now that we have an elevated partnership and friendship between us, what are going to be the obstacles to implementing this fully? And a related and final question. If you were asked to advise two countries that are fighting right now, how they should reconcile when that fighting is over, what would you say to them? Madam Minister, we'll start with you. Why don't you come with the tough question? Well, I think there would be no single model to every situation. I mean, the situation varies from one place to another, but I just think that the lesson from, I mean, the lesson from building the charts between Vietnam and the United States might be an example for other countries as well. And this is not about only the cooperation between the two governments, but more important is between two people, people of Vietnam and the people of the United States. I believe that if we can help promote the people-to-people ties day by day, we can enhance the chess building and we can enhance the mutual understanding between two people. It might be a solution to any conflict, though I would not say that it's we can have the solution in a couple of days. No, the reconciliation may take many years or many decades, but I hope that what Vietnam and the United States have achieved today can be something that other countries think of. So when it comes to obstacles for implementation, I think it goes without saying that what we have announced on Sunday, what our leaders announced, is incredibly ambitious. And anytime you set your sights to historic levels, which we have necessarily done, you're always going to have to kind of scurry to catch up with that level of leader ambition. And every government faces constraint as they implement the vision of, in particular, two visionary leaders were very enthusiastic about kind of matching that level of ambition, but of course there will always be obstacles doing so. Simply where I sit again as a White House staffer, I wish it was possible for the US government to devote unlimited resources to all of these initiatives in our fact sheet with Vietnam, but of course we do have limits. I wish we had unlimited caps on our staffing of our embassy in Hanoi so that we could implement our plans together as quickly as possible, but of course there are our limits on that as well. But I think that one of the very important lessons that we learned from Vietnamese friends and the Vietnamese system of partnership is that what we announced on Sunday is not just a burst of energy that is intended to be realized immediately or even in this administration for us, but it's a partnership whose vision is going to need to be implemented and fulfilled for years and years to come. And that's one of the remarkable things about the work that our teams have done together in recent weeks is that it was not just about preparing for a historic leader-level visit, but it was putting down on paper the contours of a partnership that our teams will be implementing together along after we have left these positions. And that is a very special thing to be a part of. When it comes to the question of how we might make recommendations humbly to any countries who are experiencing the scourge of conflict right now, I think the best lessons we can draw from our own experience, number one, to be patient. This is a 50-year narrative arc that we are talking about, an extraordinary one, but a very long one indeed. But number two, to let your people guide you. I think one of the things that is most striking from the U.S. side is how much of our initial war legacy and reconciliation work was led by American veterans and service members who wanted to see a different future for the U.S. relationship despite and because of having served during such a painful period. And their entrepreneurship and making possible so much of the work that unfolded over the course of the subsequent decades is something to which we owe a great debt of gratitude. And of course, so many individuals, individual groups in Vietnam had the same important leading role. So in many ways, our war legacy work built the foundation for our government to establish much stronger relationships, but it was key groups of service members, of NGOs, of activists, of individuals who lit the way for that work to become possible. I'd like to thank you both for being with us and allow us a personal comment from USIP. When this institution was created, the leading forces were combat veterans from our own Congress. Of course, we were established in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. So built into the very heart and the soul of this institution were people who had fought and who never wanted us ever again as a country to be in that same situation. I hope everyone joins me in thanking the minister and thanking Dr. Rapp Hooper for their introductory comments. Thank you both. Expert for Southeast Asia here at the US Institute of Peace. I work very closely with Andrew Wells Dong, who I know is much more famous for this audience. We work very closely to establish that this program in the last couple of years and you'll be seeing Andrew Wells Dong up here on stage soon enough. We have a little over 30 minutes to continue our conversation with three speakers, so I know I ought to be brief. Nobody here on stage was traveling with President Biden to Hanoi last week, but I can assure you they're all very, very interesting people and come with a diverse set of background and I think we'll address three important pillars of the war legacy and reconciliation story. So first, immediately to my left is Mr. Buntanangsat who's the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Lao PDR here in Washington, D.C. Previously, he served in very senior roles at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vientiane. He also happens to hold a PhD in Masters from Universities in Australia, so he's our Australia expert here on the stage also. Next to him is Anne Marie Yasteshak, who is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister Counselor. She's currently a Senior Advisor in USAID's Bureau of Human Capital and Talent Management. She was previously the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Asia and I think most germane to our conversation today, formerly the Mission Director for USAID in Hanoi. And finally, we have Tony Saich who comes down from Harvard to be with us today. He's the Director of the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia and the Daewoo Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He's also a noted specialist on China. He was the Ford Foundation's representative there for several re-ears in the 1990s. For today, he's going to be focused on a few initiatives that he runs related to Vietnam at the Harvard Kennedy School. So without any further ado, Mr. Chantelot, I think, you know, goes without saying to people in this room, but what Americans call the Vietnam War was actually a war in all across Indochina, including Laos. It's very important that you're here with us. Thank you and would like to give you the floor for a few initial remarks. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. So today, I'm very honored and happy to get invited and share my opinion about the war legacy. As the theme, the title of the plenary session today, it's about cooperation on war legacy. So this afternoon, I would like to talk about the UXO clearance in Laos. You may be very aware that the Vietnam War or the Sikh War in Laos, we Lao people are affected by the U.S. bombing. For nine consecutive years, from 1964 to 1973, over 2 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Laos, spreading into more than 270 million cluster sub-munitions scattered across the country from North to South. Even over half a century later, 30 percent of bombs or around 80 million bombs still remain unexploded and still active in the forest, in the rice field, and with no exception, in school, in playgrounds, where children play and go to school every day. UXO have already claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people, both adults and children, after the war ended. And they are injuring and killing our people every day. And sadly, this past June this year, there was an accident in Senyamboli province where two children were killed and three other were injured. This is a really sad story that I hear. They are playing together and they saw the bomb and they play with an exploded bomb and they were heavily affected. So with the strong determination to eliminate the impact of UXO, the love government has prioritized the UXO clearance as one of the important and crucial works that we cooperate with the foreign countries, donor countries, including with the U.S. So for almost 70 years of our diplomatic relations with the U.S., UXO clearance remains a crucial area of our cooperation. You know, to remove or clear UXO completely from the country is not an easy task. It requires times and huge budget. But with the capacity we have now, we have many difficulties to remove all of them as quickly as we want. But we would like to thank the U.S. government and donor countries for providing us the support over the past year. We know that the House of Appropriations Committee committed 80 million U.S. dollars to address the issue of conventional weapons of destruction in Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia. So we hope that the Committee to see this commitment being realized to contribute to the ongoing UXO clearance effort in our countries. So with the U.S. Assistant, we are almost 72,000 hectares of the total contaminated area of 847,000 hectares in Laos have been cleared from 1996 to 2020. But even after the three decades long efforts, we could only remove only 10 percent of the total contaminated land. So based on our current resource that we have and the budget, we are able to clear approximately 5,000 hectares per year, which will take quite a long time. And it already consumed the budget of 30 to 40 million per year. We would like once again to express our thanks to the U.S. government, donor countries, international organization for helping us and looking forward to continued assistance. So thank you very much. Well, thank you. And I think we heard, you know, this is an issue that our friends in Vietnam and Cambodia are also following, you know, where it was interesting, Ms. Nas from remarks earlier, maybe we'll circle back to this about the importance of us all working collectively. That's not just a U.S.-Vietnam proposition. So thank you for those initial comments. Emory, we'll go to you next. Thank you. Thanks very much for inviting me to speak today. It's really an honor, honor to be here and to share the stage with others who have been working to promote peace throughout Southeast Asia. I do want to just take a minute to acknowledge the incredible place we are today with a President's visit to Vietnam and the elevation of our partnership to a comprehensive strategic partnership. It's really a remarkable achievement that would not have been possible without all the work that we've all done together to address war legacy issues. I arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 2020 and it was very meaningful for me because my family, like many American families, shares an intimate connection with Vietnam. One of my oldest sisters served during the war in Vietnam as a naval nurse on a hospital ship, the USS Sanctuary, caring for American soldiers, but also primarily taking care of Vietnamese women and children. And she shared in that pain at the time and the place in the decades afterwards suffered from dioxin exposure and disability stemming from her service. Her dedication and selflessness really has impacted me and it was a huge honor for me to go to Vietnam and serve as the mission director and to follow in her footsteps, but also to address the Vietnam war legacies. And we've made I think enormous progress over the last few decades and to address war legacies, but also to look at other programs that we've been working on in Vietnam, which we can get to later, and there is a fact sheet that came out with the president announcing another $100 million in development assistance. But today USAID's current war legacy focuses in three areas. One is disabilities assistance, the second is the dioxin remediation, and then the identification of the deceased. So first with the disabilities assistance, thanks to really the historic legislation sponsored by Senator Lehi in 1991, we began a program designed to address the expressed priority of the Vietnamese government to meet the needs of those wounded by the war. And specifically it was working with about 250,000 amputees who had minimal, if any, access to appropriate, appropriate prosthetic and rehabilitation services. Since then our disabilities programming in Vietnam has grown significantly. We've contributed more than $155 million in assistance to persons with disabilities over the past 30 years and recently expanded our disability program to two new provinces, bringing the total number of supported provinces in Vietnam to 10. Across the country we've worked with partners to support children with disabilities and help parents improve their ability to care for them, and also worked with clinics and hospitals to screen for disabilities as part of routine health checks, train rehabilitation professionals to get people the help that they need, and assist in instituting Vietnam's first-ever occupational speech and language therapy courses. Over the last five years we've contributed to a significant expansion of the Vietnam's workforce of skilled rehabilitation practitioners, physical, occupational, and speech and language therapists, which really was again a tremendous step forward in training the workforce for the government and the institutions within Vietnam to be able to provide those services themselves. And now for the first time these services are really available through a number of communities. The second area was the dioxin remediation and again in close partnership with the government of Vietnam we continue to work on remediating dioxin contamination with one project complete and the other in process. So we successfully completed the cleanup of the Da Nang airport and now it's a cleaner and safer city with the airport expanding to utilize 75 acres of cleaned land. We're working closely currently with Vietnam to replicate the success in Bien Hoa, the air base, and the largest remaining hotspot of dioxin contamination and an enormous challenge, really the largest superfund site in the world that will involve four times the volume of soil that was handled in Da Nang. We are committed to working with Vietnam to complete the dioxin remediation efforts at Bien Hoa which is really an estimated over $400 million to $450 million to complete and we recently expanded our bilateral agreement to ensure implementation until 2028. The last area I really wanted to focus on as far as the war legacies is really our newest area and that's the identification of those that were killed or missing during the Vietnam War with the Department of Defense we're moving forward with new technology to work with the government of Vietnam to improve its means of identifying missing Vietnamese from the war. We have been honored to really to contribute to this absolute crucial effort the families need and deserve closure and seeing their loved ones lay to rest. We can't forget ignore or deny the legacies of the past we'll continue to do our part and address and resolve them and in doing so open up the possibilities to the future. In addition to our war legacies program we do have a comprehensive development program in Vietnam currently where we are working with the government on improving governance and transparency to really strengthen inclusive economic growth. We have been addressing other environmental challenges such as oceans plastics and now for the first time really focusing on the Mekong Delta again and really another area that's really crucial not only for Vietnam but for the world is really on the transition of energy and meeting those climate change goals and particularly the implementation of the power development plan number eight. I'll stop there but again I just want to say thank you very much for inviting me and and really look forward to a discussion about what else we can be doing together. Thank you so much Tony. Yes again thank you very much for this invitation and I also want to extend my thanks to all the staff here at USIP for putting this important event together and of course your immaculate timing for when it's now taking place. I wanted to touch on two initiatives at the Harvard Kennedy School that relate to these questions around war legacies and reconciliation. The first I'll only touch around briefly and the second actually follows from what my colleague was just talking about in terms of identification of those fallen in the conflict and I'll spend a little bit more time on that one. The first is the evolution of the Fulbright University of Vietnam and that has enabled I think many other activities to take place within Vietnam in the realms of sort of culture and education and it began way back in 1994 actually as a partnership between our Vietnam program and the University of Economics in Ho Chi Minh City and developed the Fulbright's economic teaching program that led to offering in Vietnam the first masters of public policy degree and eventually into the school which is now the graduate school as a part of the Fulbright University of Vietnam which received its operating license in 2017 as the first independent non-profit liberal arts university. So I think it has been a pioneer in the realms of education and has played an important role in helping understanding between the two countries. But let me turn to the project that's funded in terms of what we refer to the unseen legacies of the Vietnam War and that's funded by the US Defense Department and it's based at the Roger Wally Foundation Institute for Asia at the Harvard Kennedy School. From what we've been hearing it really shows a tremendous value of the work that is being conducted in this project. Many of those in Vietnam have been searching for decades for what has happened to their loved ones trying to bring some closure to what happened during the war. So it's a very valuable but it's also a very emotional project in many ways which are mentioned subsequently. It has been mentioned by the two first two speakers during President Biden's visit to Vietnam on September 11 when President Biden met with the chair of Vietnam's National Assembly. That wisdom is the handing over of one of our latest deliverables from the project which was information on 563 fallen Vietnamese soldiers of the 273rd Regiment and was delivered to the Ministry of National Defense and as was mentioned which was very moving with an actual diary from a soldier, a battlefield diary which we recovered from the CDAC collections and was able to verify it and then be able to give it to the living author in Hanoi. Previously I experienced something similar when we met with a gentleman who'd been searching for decades of information of what had happened to his father and he'd been tricked by charlatans, geomancers, soothsayers about where perhaps the remains lay but we were actually able to discover the death notification for his father which of course itself was sad but he was so relieved in many ways that actually could now bring closure to what had happened to his father all those years ago. So I just want to finish off with two sets of comments. First we've received tremendous support from the DOD and the DAO office in Hanoi especially Colonel Thomas J. Bushelon and Lieutenant Colonel Chad Somerville and that's helped us provide a range of deliverables. We produce so far in addition to President Biden's visit seven sets of deliverables, 58 research reports which encompasses over 600 individual war-dead cases and burial sites for almost 2,000 other soldiers. So we've been able to verify those information and they provide previously unseen burial site maps, written descriptions of burial sites, personal backgrounds, accounts of soldiers' deaths and circumstances as I said in the case of the individual area, the manner of the soldiers' death and the date of their demise and rough coordinates. So it's said in many ways it's an emotional and often a very sad project that one is engaged with but is extremely valuable. We were also on a prior visit able to deliver four cases of personal ephemera when we visited Ho Chi Minh's home village. We were able to deliver there a notebook of soldiers from the battlefield who'd been writing about Ho Chi Minh. We were able also to deliver another set of notes from soldiers in the battlefield to the museum for the poet Windu where they've been talking about his famous tale and writing about the inspiration it gave them. But most importantly in that visit during the field trip we were able to establish working meetings at all levels, particularly meetings with provincial leaders and provincial command and search teams in Quang Chi, Dong Nai, Tian Huai and that enabled us to establish another set of official communications for researching and sharing information that could get more directly to groups looking for possible burial sites and remains on the ground. And then as my colleague from USAID said, then the very important work takes place of how do I identify them, how do you classify them to get to the families. We heard of one elderly woman who only had one tooth left in her mouth and refused to have it taken out because she said I'd need this for future DNA representation. So what we're presently in the process of doing is trying to construct a state of the art archive dedicated around this work that will serve as a central hub for research and study on the ward, its impact on those involved. We're digitalizing collections of source documents and we'll make those accessible to project stakeholders, Vietnam War scholars and general public, the general public. And last but not least, one of the things we hope to be able to do moving forward is to be able to provide challenges for our colleagues from Vietnam on how to process a lot of these materials. So they're in collections like CDEC, how to verify them so we can actually expand the pace and scope at which we're conducting this work because obviously time is of the essence and we want to be able to speed up that work of identification and location. Thank you. Thank you Tony. It's incredibly important and increasingly urgent work. Let me start, we have a few minutes left with a follow up question for you Tony. I think at least on the surface these new programs to help Vietnam identify missing remains are a bit of an analog to what's happened in the opposite direction, Vietnamese assistance to the United States to find remains. You know what ways are these similar or different, what lessons can be learned from the U.S. remains recovery mission and are there blockages that just need to get out of the way to be as successful as possible here? The first thing of course that that process hasn't stopped in many of the people that we've been interacting with, particularly when you get to the local level are military figures who've been involved in that program and project of helping to locate American missing in action. So I think that gives a very important experience and what helps us is that actually themselves quite skilled at helping identify how valuable that information may or may not be and they can help with the verification process. You know part of this problem is and you know we know that you know there was a burial site next to a tree at this point, this point. You go there it's a shopping mall you know and so a lot of that local knowledge becomes really crucial. So my personal view is that this work dovetails very together very well together but I want to stress again the vital next component is what USAID is doing with the identification and it needs a different process and so a set of the bones that were collected were taken to the Hague which has one of the main places for identifying war dead that were able to develop technologies which will help with this process of identification in Vietnam and that is a technique that Vietnamese did not have that locating American missing in action. So I think they're complementary, I think they build on one of it and they hopefully they'll compound the impact that we'll have with this work. Great and I'll just say one of the objectives for this symposium and why it's second annual and why we found it useful last year was that there's so much work happening in different aspects of reconciliation, war legacy work and certainly there are lessons to be learned about people working in various parts and of course also connecting it to the strategic relationship to the United States of Vietnam, United States of Laos, United States and Cambodia. On that Emory let me ask you a version of the question that Lise Grande asked earlier. You know what lessons should two other countries take from this pretty remarkable journey that the United States and Vietnam have been on that I think we could say has been largely a success and what are the, to you you've lived this in Hanoi, you know what were the ingredients of success? I think again I think Mira said you know patience is one I think persistence is another and I do think that you know there's going to be there's going to be times when it's going to be hard to come together but I think continuing and having the the idea that you're achieving something together is going to push you forward and so that persistence builds that trust and that's what you have to have is really the trust between the two to come and and make it this far in what we've done with Vietnam. It is quite amazing and I would say that another portion of what our reconciliation work has been doing is looking at how do we tell the story of where we've come from? Two enemies that have come together to clean up the remediation the dioxin that was left behind it's pretty extraordinary and so another part that we've been working with the government of Vietnam is on strategic communications and telling that story and looking at the war remnants museum over how and with USIP's help is really how do we then change that to tell the story of the two enemies coming together to really achieve peace and prosperity for their people? And I think personally another part of it is you know answering that question it's been almost 50 years why do we need to still do this because work is because there's an incredible humanitarian needs too but it's also important for our countries. Let me ask the final question back to Mr. Chantelot. I mean we should acknowledge that US-Lau relations have not come the same distance as US-Vietnam relations though in a lot of ways US-Lau relations are warm you know so and I think it really is notable how our friends from Vietnam I think not so subtly anymore say that the United States and Laos, United States and Cambodia should take some lessons from this US-Vietnam journey to forge a closer relationship. How can this be? War legacy cooperations be a greater vehicle for US-Lau cooperation and where can we go from here together as two countries? Yes thank you very much. This is a really good question. I believe that our bilateral cooperation on your exocrealance it's really a tie-up effective and good cooperation. Why? Because to promote cooperation and build peace we need safetyness for the Laos people who are living in the contaminated areas. They deserve to have the feeling of safetyness to live. They deserve to have the normal livelihood and with the US assistance in this area the Laos government can develop the country and the huge area of land can be cultivated. If we don't remove UXO we will continue to face the the current impact of UXO and our children, our students, our farmers and the people living in the remote area will still face these imminent impacts. So we are very grateful that the US continue and commit to help Laos government to to to remove the UXO and we believe that this kind of cooperation will be continuous and promoted even further. Great thank you and certainly a safe and secure and prosperous Laos PDR is in the US interest in addition to the humanitarian side so I think it's essential on many fronts. We're out of time for this session. I'll remind those who are watching online that we have two other sessions coming up tomorrow at least tomorrow here in the United States at 8 30 a.m. Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon will be speaking. He's really taken a leadership role in the Senate on war legacy issues so we're thrilled to have him and at 3.45 in the afternoon we'll have another all-star panel with US Ambassador Mark Napper and several other distinguished guests so but before we close today thank you please join me in thanking the panelists here up on stage.