Thais to lay ghosts of 16,000 Allied PoWs by reopening Death Railway into Burma

The Thai Prime Minister hopes to resurrect the notorious Death Railway as a tourist train across the Three Pagodas Pass, some six decades after Allied prisoners of war completed this short-lived supply line into Burma for the Japanese Imperial Army.

On his return from a visit to Burma, Thaksin Shinawatra said officials in Rangoon had requested his help in boosting tourism through cross-border rail travel, but did not disclose exactly how the joint project might be financed.

Superstitious Thais, who believe in a potent spirit world, think this old track, which was destroyed in 1945 by Allied bombers, must surely be haunted: some 16,000 prisoners, mostly from Britain, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States, perished while being forced to build 250-mile railway during a hellish 16 months in the dense jungle. Nearly 100,000 South-east Asian labourers died in the same effort, felled by heatstroke, torture, hunger and tropical fevers.

A new scheme to carry Japanese golfers and European mountain bikers through the Karen guerrilla strongholds into southern Burma would contrast starkly with the train's inaugural run in 1944, when brothel wagons for the Japanese troops chugged into the Thanbyuzayat station to great applause.

Backpackers and war buffs already flock to Thailand's Kanchanaburi province, 80 miles west of Bangkok, to see the rather unremarkable Bridge on the River Kwai which was a crucial link in the Death Railway.

Celebrated in David Lean's 1957 film starring William Holden, Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins, the steel span of the bridge has been rebuilt since the war, but the curved portions are remnants of the original PoW construction. A handsome wooden bridge erected by prisoners in 1943, and a stronger metal bridge built with imperial supplies imported from Java, were both bombed repeatedly.

The river Kwai, or Mae Nam Khwae Yai, runs beneath the span like a trickle of milky tea. Vintage railway engines from the Second World War are polished and put on display in a museum near the bridge, and every December, local people re-enact the Allied bombardment in spectacular style with a sound and light extravaganza which overpowers the noise of the karaoke rafts that ply the river now.

Two Allied war cemeteries are laid out on the far side of the corn and sugarcane fields, and the headstones stretch to the horizon. Beyond them are sapphire mines and steep cataracts which water some of Thailand's most extensive wildlife sanctuaries.

Burma's National League for Democracy, which is loyal to Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected prime minister who was barred from office by the military junta, continues to call for Western tourists to boycott Burma and deprive the government of foreign exchange until the regime acknowledges its human rights abuses and eases restrictions against the democratic opposition.

Ms Suu Kyi was released from house arrest last year, and Amnesty International completed its first authorised inspection tour this month.