Thailand to lobby for pipeline route

Thailand to lobby for pipeline route

BANGKOK (AFP): A senior Thai official, citing the safety of
Thai oil workers, will lobby his government to reroute an
international natural gas pipeline away from Myanmar's southern
rebel territory following a recent attack, a local daily reported
yesterday.

Korn Dabaransi, a minister at the Prime Minister's Office,
said that Karen and Mon guerrillas in Myanmar posed a threat to
Thai oil workers who are to construct part of the 400-kilometer
pipeline at the Thai border province of Kanchanburi, the Sunday
Nation said.

Karen rebels ambushed a group of technicians on March 8 along
the first stages of the pipeline, which is to stretch from the
Andaman Sea, across the southern Myanmarese panhandle and to an
electricity plant in Thailand.

Five people were killed in the raid and eleven wounded, a
statement from Total, a French state-owned oil company said
recently in Paris.