Apr 1, 2009, 11:18 GMT
Hanoi - A hotel project in a popular Hanoi park is to be relocated following a public campaign, Vietnamese press said Wednesday, but city officials would not confirm the reports.
An article in the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper said construction of a Novotel hotel located inside Hanoi's Reunification Park would not be completed and that the Hanoi People's Committee, the city's governing body, was reviewing alternative sites for the project.
The hotel project has sparked widespread opposition from architects and citizens' groups concerned about loss of scarce Hanoi parkland, making it a rare occasion of spontaneous public activism in Vietnam.
Nguyen Van Thanh, deputy head of the Office of the Hanoi People's Committee, would not confirm that a decision had been made.
'We have not had any official information about canceling the project,' Thanh told the German Press Agency dpa.
In an interview published Tuesday by the news website VietnamNet, Hanoi People's Committee chairman Nguyen The Thao said investors in the project were cooperating by halting construction while the city sought a different site.
'The aspiration of local authorities and of the people is to preserve this land in order to carry out a plan to turn it into green parkland at an appropriate time,' Thao said.
Landscape architect Tran Thi Thanh Van, whose February letter to the Hanoi People's Committee touched off the popular campaign against the hotel, told
Your Talkback on this Story