Vietnam funds $1.6 million TV transmitter in Laos
HANOI - Vietnam is funding a $1.6 million new TV
transmitter in the Lao capital as part of its cooperation
programme with its impoverished communist ally, the
official media here reported Saturday.
At a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, Lao
Information Minister Sileua Bounkham said the
transmitter would be a symbol of the two neighbours'
"friendship and comprehensive cooperation."
The new station will broadcast Lao state television's
Channel Nine and Vietnamese state television's Channel
Two within a 100-kilometre (60-mile) radius of
Vientiane.
However it is unlikely to dent the cultural grip of
neighbouring Thailand whose related language is readily
understood by Laos.
A 1998 social trends survey by Hong Kong University
found 94 percent of respondents in the Lao capital had
watched Thai television in the previous week.
Vietnam has stepped up its aid programme to Laos in
recent years, paying half the eight million dollar cost of a
new museum dedicated to late Lao communist leader
Kaysone Phomvihane which opened in Vientiane last
month and funding a new military hospital in the
strife-torn northern province of Xieng Khouang.
The two neighbours are still bound by a 1977 Treaty of
Friendship and Cooperation which laid the basis of
armed intervention by Vietnamese troops in Laos through
the 1980s.
Agence France Presse - January 14, 2001.
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