Vietnam pledges $100,000 in Hurricane Katrina aid
Fri Sep 9, 2005
HANOI (Reuters) - Aid-reliant Vietnam, which receives billions of dollars every year in remittances from its diaspora in the United States, has pledged $100,000 to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"It is to show the care of the State and the Vietnamese people for American victims," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said in a statement posted on the ministry's Web site at www.mofa.gov.vn on Friday.
State media said the hurricane had affected the lives of around 55,000 people of Vietnamese origin living in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The communist southeast Asian country receives around $3 billion a year in remittances from the Vietnamese community in the United States, thought to total roughly 1.5 million. Most U.S.-Vietnamese were refugees.
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