RENCONTRER DIEU

Ranariddh benefits from corruption at the CDC (2005-Jul-30)
K.I. : As already reported, Prime Minister Hun Sen used money in different forms to convince Funcinpec President Norodom Ranariddh to support him in his attempt to remain Prime Minister after the July 2003 inconclusive elections. He offered Ranariddh a most lucrative position as Co-President, besides him [Hun Sen], of the corruption-plagued Council for the Development of Cambodia. Although, according to article 79 of the Constitution, the position offered is incompatible with that of National Assembly member – all the more so with that of National Assembly president – Ranariddh accepted it and has since shown zeal in supporting Hun Sen’s decisions to award controversial contracts such as forest land concessions.
Ref. a 27 January 2005 confidential letter from Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh to Hun Sen and Ranariddh submitting a number of investment projects to them. At the end of the 11-page letter, there is a handwritten annotation by Hun Sen giving his comments and instructions. Below Hun Sen’s annotation, Ranariddh just wrote: “I agree with the Prime Minister”, and gave his opinion about a golf course.

From soldier's road to tourist highway (2005-Jul-23)
Past and future mingle on Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh Trail
HO CHI MINH HIGHWAY, Vietnam (AP) -- If relentless American bombing didn't get him, it would take a North Vietnamese soldier as long as six months to make the grueling trek down the jungled Ho Chi Minh Trail. Today, you speed along the same route at 60 mph, past peaceful hamlets and stunning mountain scenery. The trail, which played an important role in the Vietnam War, has been added to itineraries of the country's booming tourist industry. Promoters cash in on its history, landmarks and the novelty of being able to motor, bike or even walk down the length of the country in the footsteps of bygone communist guerrillas.

Many sections of the old trail, actually a 9,940-mile web of tracks, roads and waterways, have been reclaimed by tropical growth. But a main artery has now become the Ho Chi Minh National Highway, probably the country's best and the largest public works project since Vietnam War ended 30 years ago. The highway, more than 745 miles of which are already open to traffic, begins at the gates of Hanoi, the capital, and ends at the doorsteps of Ho Chi Minh City, which was known as Saigon [ 1 ] when it was the former capital of South Vietnam.
In between, the route passes battlefields like Khe Sanh and the Ia Drang Valley, skirts tribal villages of the rugged Central Highlands and offers easy access to some of the country's top attractions -- the ancient royal seat of Hue, the picturesque trading port of Hoi An and South China Sea beaches. We began a recent car journey in the newly rebuilt city of Vinh, along one of the trail's main branches. Here in "Vietnam's Dresden," every building but one was obliterated by U.S. bombing, which attempted to stop the flow of foreign military aid through the city's port. American pilots also suffered their greatest losses of the war over its skies.

         Nearby, in the rice-farming village of Kim Lien, is the humble hut where Vietnam's revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh was born and a museum dedicated to his turbulent life. Given Ho's standing as a national icon, the village draws an average of 1.5 million domestic visitors and a smattering of foreigners each year. It was on one of Ho's birthdays, on May 9, 1959, that construction of the trail began with the establishment of Military Transport Division 559, made up of 440 young men and women. Over the next 16 years, the trail, which also wound through neighboring Laos and Cambodia, carried more than a million North Vietnamese soldiers and vast quantities of supplies to battlefields in South Vietnam despite ferocious American air strikes.
         "There are some who argue that American victory would have followed the cutting of The Trail," writes John Prados in "The Blood Road." "The Trail undeniably lay at the heart of the war. For the Vietnamese of the North the Ho Chi Minh Trail embodied the aspirations of a people ... hiking it became the central experience for a generation."
           Looking to the future
         At Dong Loc, 18 miles south of Vinh, we stopped at one of many memorials to the thousands who didn't complete that hike -- a hillside shrine with the tombs of 10 women, aged 17 to 24, killed in bombing raids. Joss sticks, flowers and the articles of female youth -- pink combs and little round mirrors -- lay on each of the last resting places. "School children come here every day. It's important in educating the young about the sacrifices of the old generation," said Dau Van Coi, secretary of the local youth union guiding visitors to what was once a major trail junction. Exhibiting no hostility to American visitors, he noted that U.S. warplanes dropped more than three bombs per 10 square feet on the area.
         Farther down the trail, at the Highway 9 National Cemetery, bemedaled veteran Nguyen Kim Tien searched for fallen comrades among the 10,000 headstones. An elderly woman and her daughter wept before three of them -- those of the older woman's father, husband and a close relative. Although it's still a trail of tears three decades after the guns fell silent, Ho's road looks decidedly to the future. "We cut through the Truong Son jungles for national salvation. Now we cut through the Truong Son jungles for national industrialization and modernization," said former Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet when the 10-year project began in 2000. The government says the highway will stimulate the economy in some of Vietnam's poorest, most remote regions, relieve congestion on the only other north-south road, National Highway 1, and increase tourism revenue. Besides conventional tours, several companies offer mountain biking along sections of the trail and expeditions on Russian-made Minsk motorcycles out of the 1950s.
         However, the highway has sparked domestic and international criticism that it will lead to further decimation of Vietnam's already disappearing forests, attract a flood of migrants into ethnic minority regions from the crowded coast and disturb wildlife at several protected areas. The Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature has criticized the project as "the single largest long-term threat to biodiversity in Vietnam." So far, little of the officially hoped-for development is evident. In central Vietnam, one drives for long stretches meeting just the occasional Soviet-era truck, decrepit tractor or water buffalo-drawn cart as the highway winds through valleys flanked by spectacular limestone cliffs. At some places like the A Shau valley town of A Luoi, just a few shacks and farm houses when seen five years ago, a mini-boom is clearly afoot. There's a bustling market selling baskets of fruit, Japanese watches and delicious French bread, and newly built houses abound.
         From the highway, which expands to four lanes as it runs through the crossroads town, Dong Ap Bia looms in the hazy distance. American soldiers called it Hamburger Hill because of the number of lives ground up in the 1969 battle on its ridges. Almost all traces of American presence in A Luoi have vanished. Only the old people can point out the helicopter landing field, now a school playground with a decrepit merry-go round featuring three little airplanes. The laughing youngsters who crowd around the foreign visitors know nothing of the war.

____________________
(1) Prey Qor, Khmer town under Jay Jeddha II, was taken by the Vietnamese and became Saigon while Cham kingdom of Champa was still there. Even nowadays number of Vietnameses like to call Phnom Penh "Nam Yang". [ N.P. ]

Le millième de ce qu'a fait Sihanouk (2005-Jul-17)

China and Japan compete for ASEAN markets (2005-Jul-10)

China pledges US$400 million in aid and investment for Cambodia
         PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Cambodia's foreign minister said Friday that China has pledged more than US$400 million (euro335 million) in aid and investment to the impoverished country for projects including a hydropower plant. The agreements were signed last week when Prime Minister Hun Sen held talks with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on the sidelines of a regional summit meeting. The meeting "has resulted in more than US$400 million for our nation," Foreign Minister Hor Namhong told reporters. "This is colossal."
         China's pledges include a US$300 million (euro250 million) investment to build a hydropower plant in southwest Cambodia, Hor Namhong said. Cambodia in May awarded a state-run Chinese company the contract to build the plant, which will produce 180 megawatts of electricity. China will also provide more than US$40 million (euro33.5 million) to build a new office complex for Cambodia's prime minister and US$60 million (euro50 million) to purchase patrol boats to combat smuggling and drug trafficking. China will also give Cambodia 200 water pumps to irrigate rice paddies and 30 fire engines, the foreign minister said.
         "This shows that our international cooperation with China in particular keeps growing and expanding for the benefit of our country," Hor Namhong said. It was not clear how much of the package would consist of grants or loans. Beijing in recent years has given Cambodia millions of dollars in aid and pledged to write off all of the country's past debts. Hun Sen met with Wen on the sidelines of the summit of leaders of the Greater Mekong Subregion, which includes China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar. The group's aim is to boost trade and tourism across their borders and form a six-nation hydropower energy network using the Mekong River, the vast waterway that links the member countries.
[Copyright 2005 The Associated Press]

Aid reveals Japan's grand designs for Asia
MEKONG BASIN WORK SEEN AS PREPARATIONS
By RALPH JENNINGS
           KUNMING, China (Kyodo) - Japan's recent $1 million technical assistance grant to upgrade a coastal transit corridor from Vietnam to Thailand looks at first like typical governmental largess, a slice of the hundreds of millions of dollars Japan gives to developing Asian countries. But to Southeast Asia, the grant indicates again that Japan has strategic economic designs on the five countries that make up the 200-million-strong Mekong basin -- Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam -- according to officials at the Second Greater Mekong Subregion Summit in Kunming, China.
           The two-day summit ended Tuesday. Japan probably sees Southeast Asia as an export market, a place to find natural resources and to develop tourism, said Suranand Vejjajiva, a minister at the Thai Prime Minister's Office. "Not only Japan, but I think other investors from other areas will be much interested in this area if we can really integrate ourselves," he said after signing trade agreements for fast-track border-crossings with Cambodia and Laos. Japan's technical assistance grant, which will be channeled through the Asian Development Bank in September, will pay for 10 months of feasibility studies and environmental impact reports on new bridges, tunnels and road work that will improve the connections between the two countries via the Cambodian coast.
           The highway must skirt a national park in Vietnam and be upgraded at the Vietnam-Cambodia border. Japanese official development assistance loans are also helping to build a 1,500-km east-west highway from Danang on the Vietnamese coast across to Mawlamyine on the coast of Myanmar.

           The Japan Bank for International Cooperation has lent 18.9 billion yen to Vietnam for the Hy Van Tunnel along the highway, and given Laos and Thailand loans of 8.1 billion yen for a highway bridge to be completed in 2006. Japanese aid also paid for upgrades to Danang port, which is near the east end of the corridor and closer to Japan by sea than the Malacca Strait. Well-built east-west routes with coastal access could help Japan transport goods across Southeast Asia from points farther west, perhaps even oil from the Middle East, 10 or more years down the line, a Southeast Asian source said on condition of anonymity. "Every donor country has two hands," said Bradford Philips, ADB country director in Vietnam. "One is development and the other investment."

         But Japan is not paying into a north-south corridor between Kunming, the capital of China's Yunnan Province, and Bangkok. This route would help Southeast Asia conduct trade with China, which Japan sees as an economic rival. The ADB needs money to repair a Lao highway segment that gets flooded four months of the year. Japan is the largest contributor to ADB programs in the Mekong region, with $800 million in loans for seven road and hydropower projects since 1992. It is jousting with China and India for dominance in Southeast Asia, especially with a developing market, Pacific ports and natural gas reserves all but confirmed under the Gulf of Thailand, said Rajat Nag, general director of the ADB's Mekong Department.
           The coastal highway that would be studied with Japanese money would facilitate access to any offshore gas, which would be closer to Cambodia than other countries. "Japan is important. I think Japan is very interested in this region in a very geopolitical sense," Nag said. Japan has been stoking Southeast Asian growth since the 1960s. India now wants stronger political ties and more market access in Southeast Asia to vie with China's influence in the region, he said. But the competition seems tough. When Myanmar upgraded phone systems from analog to digital, it switched from Japanese to Chinese technology, said Aye Kyaw, deputy general manager of Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications. He said Japan, which also provided technical support for a business park, wants more but must compete to have contracts approved by central government leaders.
           "Japan is trying very hard to get back in," Aye Kyaw said. A Chinese official said that while China and Japan had similar ambitions for Southeast Asia, the region has enough opportunities for both. "I think both Japan and China and the Southeast Asian countries have a lot of common interests, and we have ample opportunities to work together," said Wang Xiaolong, chairman of the Chinese summit preparation task force. "This doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, and it could be a win-win situation. And from what has happened so far, it seems that things are going exactly that way." Next week, the ADB will hold a Mekong development forum in Tokyo to seek $15 billion in private-sector support for power projects, education and health care in Southeast Asia over the next 10 years.
[The Japan Times]

U.S. Gives Cambodia Grant To Fight HIV/AIDS (2005-Jul-07)
         PHNOM PENH - The United States has given Cambodia nearly U.S. $30 million to fight HIV/AIDS in the impoverished Southeast Asian country. Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Charles Ray signed two grant agreements June 30 with Cambodia Foreign Minister Hor Namhong. Some U.S. $29 million given in grants is earmarked for HIV/AIDS prevention, education, and care, as well as promoting maternal and child health and improving health workers' skills.
         Another U.S. $6 million will go toward improving education, including for the disabled and ethnic minorities, as well as teacher training and programs to reduce drop out rates, officials said. Ray said Cambodia has made "significant progress" in reducing HIV/AIDS over the last five years but added the government must "keep those improvements sustained." "Better health facilities and improved classrooms are important, and our programs are helping to bring this about," said Ray, whose term expires in the coming weeks. He said the grants will bring total U.S. aid to Cambodia this year to U.S.$55 million.

Cambodian AIDS patient
Seang Lot, 24, sits on a
wheelchair at AIDS patient
center in Takeo. Photo:
AFP/Khem Sovannara

         UNAIDS says AIDS is spreading faster in East Asia than anywhere else in the world, although the proportion of HIV-positive adults in Cambodia fell from 3 percent in 1997 to 1.9 percent in 2003. Other countries now struggling to address the spread of HIV among intravenous drug users include Burma, Vietnam, and Indonesia. In East Asia as a whole, the number of people living with HIV rose by 24 percent in 2004 alone, according to a UNAIDS report published July 1 at a regional AIDS conference in Kobe, Japan.
         Nearly 3,000 people from 60 countries recognized that the region is "at a crossroads" with the epidemic, with 12 million new infections expected in the next five years without any additional action. Prasada Rao, regional support team director of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, said that in a region where 1,500 people die each day due to AIDS, "Business as usual is no longer an option." [Radio Free Asia]

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