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Laos - and today Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya gave a news exclusive to a group of visiting Lao senior reporters.

It has yet to make the policy statement to Parliament, but Abhisit's government will place a priority on neighbouring countries based on the Asean framework.

That's what can be summed up from the foreign policy of Abhisit government, scattered across 33 pages of the policy document, to be presented for parliamentary approval on December 29 to 30, said Kasit.

"I want to tell the Lao media that the Thai government will not only serve Thais, but the current government aims to promote relations with the neighbouring country of Laos," he said during the press conference to launch a handbook for journalists covering Thai-Lao relations, at the Thai Journalists' Association yesterday.

The Thai-Lao media manual is a product of the close relationship between the two journalists associations, dating back 22 years.

The two media associations co-authored the manual to help Thai and Lao reporters working on stories which relate to the two nations. After years of back-and-forth contact, the handbook is now complete.

The Thai and Lao languages are almost identical, a reflection of the close relationship between the two nations. Thai and Lao speakers conversed in their native languages at yesterday's event and managed to understand each other well.

However, there are also differences in the languages, which can create verbal confusion when users don't understand the context and the implication of certain words. At times, Thai and Lao people have come into conflict due to unknowingly choosing incorrect words.

Relations between the Thai and Lao media associations indicated the friendship between the two countries at the people level.

Somsanouk Mixay, vice president of the Lao Journalists' Association, who led the senior Lao reporters to Thailand, said the manual showed that the associations had realised a shared dream. The staff working on the manual were both Thai and Lao journalists.

Apart from the vocabulary chapter, the handbook includes a list of Thai and Lao media associations, the history of the their relationship and other information of use to those covering stories about the two countries.