Cuban Minister Visits the Ho Chi Minh Highway...

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source - JosePertierra@aol.com


Agence France Presse - April 19, 2002


Cuban minister visits engineers rebuilding wartime Vietnam arms trail

HANOI, April 19--Cuban Construction Minister Juan Mario Junco del
Pino Friday travelled to the old dividing line between communist
North Vietnam and the US-backed south to visit Cuban engineers
rebuilding the communists' wartime supply route.

A company of 13 Cuban sappers first concreted the same section of
jungle trail in Quang Tri province in 1973 to lay the ground for the
North's triumphant 55-day offensive two years later.

The JIC Construction joint venture is now asphalting the 90 kilometre
(55 mile) section as part of a prestige project to turn the wartime
Ho Chi Minh Trail into a 1,690 kilometre (1,050 mile) trunk highway
linking north and south. Junco del Pino, who arrived in Hanoi
Tuesday, was due to meet three Cuban engineers who have been working
on the project since its launch in 2000 as part of festivities to
mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the war, project official
Tran Minh Duc told AFP.

Another Cuban venture, Quality Couriers International, is building
the biggest section of the new highway, a 985 kilometre (615 mile)
stretch from northern Ha Tay province to central Kontum with 300 new
bridges.

State-run media have sharply reduced their reporting of the prestige
project since an emigre rights group charged it was being built with
the forced labour of ordinary citizens under a new community service
obligation.

Project officials insisted they could not answer questions about its
progress without written authorization from the foreign ministry.

But it is clear that the project has taken a heavy toll on the
construction teams -- a state-run daily reported that well over
hundred labourers succumbed to malaria in the first six months of
construction alone, despite compulsory use of mosquito nets and
prophylactics.

The authorities intend to use the new highway as a relief road for
the coastal Route One, which is currently the country's only
north-south trunk road and is regularly swamped by seasonal flooding.

But Western diplomats say the money would have been better spent on
upgrading the existing highway than on reviving memories of military
triumphs more than a quarter of a century old.

During the war, US planes dropped thousands of tonnes of munitions on
the 16,000-kilometre (9,930-mile) network of trails, tunnels and
canals which the communists built to transport supplies from north to
south, without ever completely closing it.

 
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