YANGON (DPA) — UNESCO would help Myanmar update its inventories of the ancient capital Bagan, an important initial step to safeguarding the site, the government said Friday.
"The experts from UNESCO will train our staff on how we should do the process of inventory," Myanmar's deputy culture minister Sandar Khin told dpa.
Doing a proper inventory "is the essential first step for Bagan to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site," she said.
The announcement comes days after the ancient cities of Pyu were designated as a World Heritage Site.
Myanmar nominated Bagan to the World Heritage Committee in 1996, but the site has not achieved UNESCO world heritage status, thought largely to be because of poor restoration work undertaken by the military junta in the 1990s.
Bagan was the capital city of the first Myanmar Kingdom, which contains more than 2,500 Buddhist monuments built from the 10th to the 14th centuries AD.
