The founder and President of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF), Jan Scruggs, will visit Vietnam to step up efforts to address more than 350,000 tonnes of potentially deadly ordnance believed to be scattering in Vietnam ’s land after the war.

He will be accompanied by a 20-strong delegation, mostly Vietnam veterans, according to mySanAntonio.com, the Web site of the San Antonio Express-News, the online voice of South Texas .

The Vietnam veterans’ tour from January 11-17 will begin in Hanoi with planned stops in the central provinces of Quang Tri, Thua Thien-Hue, the central city of Da Nang and Ho Chi Minh City .

Scruggs was quoted by mySanAntonio.com as saying that in 2001, the VVMF worked with Quang Tri to create Project RENEW to prevent injuries through public education and ordnance removal.

The Project RENEW - "Restore the Environment and Neutralise the Effects of the War", first named as "Restore the use of land to the Vietnamese through Education and Neutralization of the Effects of the War", recently was awarded a congressional defence appropriation of 1 million USD to continue its work, the VVMF founder said.

Since the VVMF sent its first delegation to visit Vietnam in 1995, it has taken various activities to back the US-Vietnam ties.

The fund has worked to pull the attention of politicians, the public and non-governmental organisations in the US to projects to address war consequences in Vietnam, especially the clearance of unexploded bombs and ordnance left from the war, like project RENEW in Quang Tri province./.