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Thailand, Myanmar ink agreement on second border bridge

BANGKOK: Thailand and Myanmar signed an agreement Monday to build a second friendship bridge across their border, foreign ministry officials said.

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and his Myanmar counterpart Win Aung signed the memorandum for construction of the bridge in the Myanmar border town of Tachilek, opposite Mae Sai in Thailand’s northernmost Chiang Rai province.

The ceremony was witnessed by military-run Myanmar’s number three, General Khin Nyunt, who is Secretary One of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), a Thai foreign ministry official said. After the signing ceremony, Khin Nyunt and the foreign ministers crossed into Thailand for a ground-laying ceremony in Mae Sai, a border town on the edge of the notorious drug trafficking area known as the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Myanmar and Laos meet. The bridge, a 90-metre (297-foot) span, will be built entirely with Thai government funding of 38 million baht (903,000 dollars), and should be completed in six months, the official said. The first friendship bridge between the two neighbours, who have had a testy relationship in recent years strained by border skirmishes and the drugs trade, was erected in the late 1990s between Thailand’s Mae Sot and Myanmar’s Myawadee.

Following the bridge agreement the two sides were to discuss issues of mutual concern including the return of Myanmar migrant labourers who had worked in Thailand, the official said. —AFP

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