U.S. president plans Laos visit in 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama is set to make the first visit by a current U.S. head of state to Laos in 2016 as the landlocked nation of a population of some 7 million readies itself for a year-long chairmanship of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Obama's planned visit was reportedly outlined by U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and confirmed to Xinhua by the U.S. Embassy in Vientiane.

The planned visit comes as the 10-member group institutes the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), a set of agreements designed to increase cross-border flows of investment, trade and skilled workers among member nations.

The visit is likely to come at a leaders summit in November, nearing the end of Obama's second four-year term in the White House and in close proximity to elections held to choose his successor in the role.

The historic planned visit comes as two countries continue efforts to repair a relationship complicated by history of U.S. interventions in the form of bombing raids in the Indochina (Vietnam) War which saw more than 2 million tonnes of weapons including anti-personnel cluster munitions dropped on the country for nearly a decade starting in 1964.

Many of these munitions remain a threat to life and livelihoods in the form of unexploded ordnance, lying concealed the country's rural interior and hampering socio-economic development.

Laos, one of the smaller nations of the ASEAN group, is seeking to be removed from a list of the world's least developed nations by 2020. Endit