On behalf of the MEKONG COMMITTEE—that is to say on behalf of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and the Republic of Vietnam—and on behalf of the United Nations and the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, whose Executive Secretary is with us this afternoon, I should like to express profound thanks to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for the great honor you are conferring upon us.

We are especially pleased by your mention of the entities cooperating with us: notably ECAFE, and also 11 other members of the UN family; 21 countries from outside the basin, three foundations, and a number of private business organizations.

Our Mekong project has two origins. On the one hand is the vast Mekong River itself: tenth largest river in the world, 4,600 kilometers long, draining in its lower basin an area larger than all France and twice as large as Japan, inhabited—in our four countries—by 20 million people, and pouring annually more than 400 million acre feet of water into the South China Sea. On the other hand is the appreciation, slowly dawning upon our four countries, of the tremendous underutilization of this great resource. Our objective in the MEKONG COMMITTEE is to bring this great resource into use. In doing so, our four-member MEKONG COMMITTEE—one member from each of our four countries—follows one basic rule: we work for all the people of the basin with absolutely no distinction as to nationality, creed, or politics.

On the mainstream of the Mekong we are pushing the planning of three major projects which will be among the largest in the world. We hope and believe that these three mainstream projects, or at least two of them, will be at the finance and construction stage by or before the end of the present decade—the United Nations Development Decade.

The COMMITTEE also has projects scheduled for the 34 principal Mekong tributaries. Here the COMMITTEE's wark has gone beyond. planning to construction. On 14 November 1965 His Majesty the King of Thailand officially opened the first of the MEKONG COMM
TTEE's tributary projects to be brought physically into being: the Nam Pung in the parched northeast of Thailand. This was followed on 14 March 1966 by a similar ceremony at which His Majesty opened the much larger Nam Pong Project, also in northeast Thailand. Two modest but welcome hydroelectric projects are advancing in Laos, near Pakse and Luang Prabang. In 1965 the COMMITTEE and its friends concentrated fundraising activities in the US$24 million Nam Ngum tributary project in Laos. These efforts culminated in success; Nam Ngum in Laos and Nam Pong in Thailand are to be interconnected, pursuant to a covenant signed by the four MEKONG COMMITTEE members and the United Nations, and work is now proceeding whereby power generated at Nam Pong in Thailand will be in use across the Mekong in Vientiane, Laos, by mid-1967.

The stage is also set for construction of the Prek Thnot tributary project in Cambodia. Some work has already begun and the MEKONG COMMITTEE, assisted by the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Executive Secretary of ECAFE, is now exerting every effort to arrange financing for this project pursuant to an ECAFE resolution endorsing the MEKONG COMMITTEE decision to consider 1966 as "Cambodia Year."

No less determination is invested by the COMMITTEE in its efforts to improve navigation in the maritime lower reach of the river, in the canal network of the delta, and in the Lao and Thai reaches of the river upstream of the Khone Falls.

We are also pressing forward with a large number of ancillary projects, including a network of experimental and demonstration farms, forestry and fisheries development, power market projections, mineral surveys, industrial planning, and social development and public health projects.

Training is a vital part of our activity. Forty-one percent of the COMMITTEE'S professional staff are drawn from the four riparian countries; these staff members are contributing greatly to the COMMITTEE'S progress, and at the same time are growing with the COMMITTEE. In addition, the COMMITTEE sponsors an extensive program of seminars, study tours, and fellowships, and obtains considerable quantities of textbooks and technical studies for use throughout the basin.

Much money is needed for all this work. We are happy indeed to have received some US$110,000,000 in pledges to date. And we are proud that nearly one third of this is coming from our four Mekong governments themselves.

President Marcos, Senator Manahan, and members of the Board of Trustees, may I say in conclusion that your decision to present to us the Ramon Magsaysay 1966 Award for International Understanding marks an important milestone in our work. For the first time in our history an eminent body from outside our basin, a body with which we have had no previous contact, has paid tribute to what we are trying to accomplish. Through this major and splendid Award, you give each of us deep inspiration, which will be a source of assurance and strength in all that lies ahead. You have touched the Mekong Spirit with something of the spirit of Ramon Magsaysay.