SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Mekong Nations To Sign Landmark Agreement (1)

BANGKOK, Nov 26 (IPS) - Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand appear to be finally seeing the end of two years of sticky negotiations over how to equitably share the waters of the River Mekong.

Officials from the four so-called Lower Mekong countries meeting in Hanoi this week are to sign an agreement Monday to set up a Mekong River Commission for joint development activities, says the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bangkok.

The UNDP has been helping the four to draft a new pact to revive the old cooperation framework of the long-dormant Mekong Committee.

Final agreement had been postponed several times since May due to longstanding disputes over "equitable and reasonable" water use between upstream Thailand and the collective downstream Indochinese countries.

UNDP officials were tight-lipped about details concerning the breakthrough agreement but confirmed the Hanoi talks were a success.

"They are talking about a document that they intend to initial on Monday which means that all the negotiations are over," said Herbert Behrstock, chief of the UNDP's East Asia Division regional bureau for Asia and the Pacific.

Behrstock was in Bangkok to preside over a two-day meeting on Lower Mekong subregional cooperation that ended Friday.

He will be in Hanoi on Monday for the signing of the crucial agreement that the UNDP says will "open the door for new collaborative efforts among the four countries".

The agreement's formal signing is expected to take place next year after each government approves the initial conditions, said Behrstock. The next step would be a series of official meetings among the four countries.

"The governments will have to decide when they want to sign the agreement and determine the things that they need to implement it," the UNDP official added.

The document marks the end of a final negotiating phase that began in February last year but was delayed by disagreements until the breakthrough this week.

Cooperation among the riparian states of the lower Mekong basin began in 1957 under the Mekong Committee, which lapsed into dormancy in 1975 with the communist victories in Indochina.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service