[vnforum] China should ensure dam doesn't hurt Mekong-Hanoi
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China should ensure dam doesn't hurt Mekong-Hanoi
10/13/2000 6:09:00 AM
HANOI, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Vietnam says neighbouring China should ensure its dam
building on the upper parts of the Mekong River does not harm the environment
along the river further downstream.
"We think that the use of Mekong River should not cause any impact on the
quality and quantity of water in the Mekong River," Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in a statement seen on Friday.
"(It) should ensure the sustainability of the ecological environment of the
entire river as well as legitimate and equal interest of all the countries
located in the basin."
Thanh was responding to an article in the latest edition of the Hong Kong-based
Far Eastern Economic Review magazine that said environmentalists were worried
about the potential effect of a dam nearing completion in southern China's
Yunnan province.
The new dam was apparently not a factor in devastating floods this year in the
lower Mekong River region which have killed about 600 people in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos and Thailand and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
But the environmentalists feared it would harm the environment downstream by
increasing industrial pollution, obstructing fish migration and trapping silt
that enriches soil, the magazine said.
The Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam is the country's key rice-growing area.
The massive dam, the second of 14 planned hydroelectric dams on the Chinese
section of the river, is expected to be completed next year, the magazine said.
The Red Cross and United Nations have blamed deforestation for the Mekong
floods and warned of worse to come.
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