of the Committee, Chuck Lankester, to resign and leave the country after barring the secretariat from the March 1992 meeting. This prompted a series of meetings organized by the UNDP (which was terrified that the regime in which it had invested so much might disappear), culminating in the April 1995 Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin signed by Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam in Chiang Rai, Thailand, creating the Mekong River Commission (MRC). Since the dramatic confrontation of 1992, several seemingly overlapping organizations were created, including the Asian Development Bank's Greater Mekong Subregion (ADB-GMS, 1992), Japan's Forum of Comprehensive Development of Indochina (FCDI, 1993), the Quadripite Economic Cooperation (QEC, 1993), the Association of South East Asian Nations and Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry's Working Group on Economic Cooperation in Indochina and Burma (AEM-MITI, 1994), and (almost finalized) Myanmar and Singapore's ASEAN-Mekong Basin Development Cooperation (ASEAN-ME, 1996). Mekong River Commission (1995–present) The MRC has evolved since 1995. Some of the "thorny issues" set aside during the negotiation of the agreement were at least partially resolved by the implementation of subsequent programmes such as the Water Utilization Programme (WUP) agreed to in 1999 and committed to implementation by 2005. The commission’s hierarchical structure has been repeatedly tweaked, as in July 2000 when the MRC Secretariat was restructured. The 2001 Work Programme has largely come to be viewed as a shift "from a project-oriented focus to an emphasis on better management and preservation of existing resources." On paper, the Work Programme represents a rejection of the ambitious development schemes embodied by the 1970 and 1987 Indicative Basin Plans (calling for no mainstream dams) and a shift to a holistic rather than programmatic approach. In part, these changes represent a response to criticism of the MRC's failure to undertake a "regional-scale project" or even a region-level focus. 2001 also saw a major shift in the MRC—at least on paper—when it committed to a role as a "learning organization" with an emphasis on "the livelihoods of the people in the Mekong region." In the same year its annual report emphasized the importance of "bottoms-up" solutions and the "voice of the people directly affected." Similarly, the 2001 MRC Hydropower Development Strategy explicitly disavowed the "promotion of specific projects" in favor of "basin-wide issues." In part, these shifts mark a retreat from past project failures and recognition that