EXTRACTS: Vietnam says around 4.8 million Vietnamese have been exposed to dioxin with more than three million people eventually becoming victims of Agent Orange.

"We lost some battles against the Americans, but we won the war," he said. "It will be the same in this case. We are in a winning position. Many people say that politically we have already won."

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Vietnam Agent Orange group takes its case to United States
Agence France-Presse (AFP), 10 June 2007 http://news.sawf.org/Lifestyle/38348.aspx

When Nguyen Van Quy's platoon fought in the Vietnam War battlefields of Kontum in 1972, his soldiers moved through eery landscapes where the US defoliant Agent Orange had stripped bare the jungle.

HANOI (AFP) - "All the big trees were dead, they had no leaves," the 52-year-old veteran remembers. "Only the new undergrowth was green. We saw big chemical drums, but at the time we didn't know what they were."

Finding food was difficult in the denuded mountains, forcing the young soldiers to forage for frogs, cassava and wild plants and drink water from local streams, the former platoon leader told AFP.

Quy was wounded three times as his North Vietnamese forces battled the US-backed Saigon regime -- but the worst pain, he said, came years after the war ended in communist victory in 1975.

Today Quy has stomach cancer and liver and lung disease. His first child died at birth, he said, his 20-year-old son is paralysed, and his 18-year-old daughter is deaf and mute and suffers from mental retardation.

Quy blames dioxin, the highly toxic chemical and known carcinogen in the herbicides of which US forces sprayed up to 80 million litres (21 million US gallons) over southern Vietnam between 1961 and 1971.

Agent Orange was sprayed from US and South Vietnamese aircraft to defoliate forests and mangroves to deprive the enemy of cover and food supplies.

On Sunday Quy was set to arrive in the United States with a delegation of the Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA), to fight for compensation from 37 US companies that produced Agent Orange.

Their case against the companies, including giants Dow Chemical and Monsanto, was thrown out in 2005, but on June 18 the plaintiffs will launch their appeal at a federal court in New York.

The court hearing will take place on the same day Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet comes to New York ahead of a June 22 meeting with US President George W. Bush, the first US visit by a post-war Vietnamese head of state.

The VAVA group, to promote its cause, will also visit Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles until June 29.

Vietnam says around 4.8 million Vietnamese have been exposed to dioxin with more than three million people eventually becoming victims of Agent Orange.

Washington has denied responsibility and pointed to an absence of universally agreed scientific data on the chemical's effects.

US ambassador Michael Marine said in February: "We need credible scientific research, done at international standards with peer review that both sides accept, and we have not been able to achieve that."

In a sign of closer cooperation, the United States offered Vietnam 400,000 dollars to study the clean-up of a "dioxin hotspot," the former US airbase and Agent Orange depot in the central coastal city of Danang.

But VAVA says the amount does not begin to address what it describes as the disastrous consequences of chemical warfare -- millions who, it says, have suffered a variety of diseases and birth defects.

The association has the support of veterans' groups from the United States, Australia, Canada, South Korea and New Zealand, some of whom have already won legal victories or been compensated in out-of-court settlements.

US war veterans have received 180 million dollars in a settlement with chemical companies, and last year a South Korean court ordered Dow Chemical and Mosanto to compensate 6,800 South Korean victims.

VAVA vice president Nguyen Trong Nhan, speaking shortly before leaving Hanoi, predicted their legal battle would be "extremely difficult."

"Vietnam is a poor country and the American companies are very rich and Vietnamese victims are suing in a US court," said Nhan, a former health minister.

But he said the Vietnamese were confident of victory.

"We lost some battles against the Americans, but we won the war," he said. "It will be the same in this case. We are in a winning position. Many people say that politically we have already won."