Mekong River contries differ over water control

Mekong River contries differ over water control

HANOI (Reuter): Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand have ended a two-day meeting of their Mekong River Commission (MRC) in Hanoi after having failed to agree on sensitive issues, a U.N. official said last Wednesday.

The official, from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Hanoi, said the four nations -- joined last Tuesday by representatives from China and Burma -- had postponed further discussion to a meeting next month in Bangkok.

The meeting failed to agree on the delicate issues of controlling water pollution and usage, he said.

"There was different emphasis on this among the differing delegations," said the official, who declined to be named.

The 4,180-km (2,600 mile) long Mekong River rises on the Tibetan Plateau and flows through China and along the Burma-Laos and Laos-Thailand borders before passing through Cambodia and southern Vietnam into the South China Sea.

China said in January it planned to spend US$12 million this year to dredge and build ports along its main Mekong tributary -- the Lancang River -- in order to improve trade and travel with its Southeast Asian neighbors.

However the UNDP official indicated that such plans were causing concern to nations further downstream.

"The lower down the river you get the more important the water quality aspects become and so therefore the Vietnamese delegations are very keen that when water usage rates and rules are developed the issue of quality is incorporated into those rules.

"And some of the other nations are not quite so strong on that linkage," he said, without giving details.

The Mekong River Commission, set up in the 1950s but reformed last year after decades of war in Indochina, is made up of the four lower-basin nations through which the river runs.

A UNDP spokesman said last Monday the commission was working to include China and Burma as full MRC members, although a date for their joining has not been fixed.

Last week's meeting was the Joint Committee's third main session.