Vietnam invests in tourism development at disputed waterfall site
HANOI - Vietnam has begun improving the road leading to the Ban Gioc Waterfall, hoping to draw more tourists to a natural attraction located along its long-disputed border with China, a government official said Monday.
The project is part of a plan by the government to invest 40 billion dong (US$260,000) making the site more accessible to tourists, the official said on customary condition of anonymity.
Vietnam gave up part of its historic claim to the waterfall to China in an agreement three years ago that was supposed to resolve decades-old border disputes between the communist neighbors.
Under the arrangement, which has been criticized by dissidents in Vietnam for giving away too much land, the bottom of the waterfall belongs to Vietnam, while officials from the two countries are still trying to demarcate the top.
The planned 40 billion dong (US$260,000) investment in the Ban Gioc Waterfall will also pay for a new bridge, a river embankment, a parking lot and electricity and water supplies, the official said.
"With the investment, we hope to attract more local and foreign tourists," he said, adding that more than 23,000 mostly local tourists visited in the first ten months of this year.
Vietnam recently publicized the terms of the 1999 border treaty with China amid mounting anger over allegations that the Hanoi government gave up as much as 700 square kilometers (270 square miles) of land.
Vice Foreign Minister Le Cong Phung dismissed those claims in a recent interview, saying that the two countries had agreed to an even split of 227 square kilometers (88 sq. miles) of territory under dispute. The new borders are slowly being demarcated, a process that will take several years.
Relations between China and Vietnam broke down after their a war in 1979, when Chinese troops attacked Vietnam to punish it for ousting the murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.
The two countries normalized relations in 1991 and recently began erecting markers along their 1,350-kilometer (840-mile) land border in accordance with the 1999 agreement.
The issue remains highly sensitive, however.
Last week, a lawyer in Hanoi was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of anti-government propaganda for posting an article on the Internet criticizing the border deal.
The Associated Press - November 11, 2002
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