Defying an international outcry, Myanmar's military rulers have begun building a nearly 200-foot-tall viewing tower in the midst of the ancient temple city of Bagan, one of Asia's greatest archaeological sites.

The project is adding to the severe criticism already heaped on Myanmar's junta for its allegedly unplanned and inaccurate rebuilding of many ruins, and its record in general of suppressing human rights and democracy.

"It's a cultural crime," said Pierre Pichard, a Bagan expert at the French Research School of the Far East, based in neighboring Thailand.

"It will be ... conspicuous and ugly, and it's totally crazy to add such a structure in the middle of an ancient historical site," he said.

The 1,000-year old temple complex is on a par with Cambodia's Angkor temples — an unmatched vista of thousands of Buddhist temples and monuments spread among rice paddies over an area nearly twice the size of Manhattan.

There are giant circular pagodas with soaring domes, small temples with corncob-shaped spires, and exquisitely proportioned ziggurats, or terraced pyramids.

More than 4,400 pagodas and 3,000 other religious structures of bricks and stones were built in Bagan, Myanmar's former capital, during a 243-year period from the 11th to 13th centuries, the result of extraordinary Buddhist fervor.

Today, 2,237 ruins and temples remain, many of them still used by worshippers.

The junta says the 198-foot tower, roughly 16 stories, will give tourists a bird's-eye view of Bagan and they will be barred from clambering over ancient pagodas that are being damaged by thousands of invading feet every day.

Tour guides say the brick and mortar edifice, higher than every temple except one, will ruin the beauty of the area. But the fear of the dictatorial junta is such that no one is willing to voice opposition publicly.

UNESCO, the U.N. agency that has the power to grant or withhold prestigious World Heritage status and the accompanying funding, has spoken loudly against the tower.

"It's a very big mistake. It sticks a big eyesore right in the middle of the site," said Richard Engelhardt, UNESCO's Bangkok-based regional adviser for culture.

But the junta has refused to reply to UNESCO's official complaints.

Bob Hudson, a University of Sydney archaeologist working in Bagan, told The Associated Press that almost half of the 2,237 monuments have been rebuilt, sometimes from the ground up.

"In many cases, ruined piles of rubble have been speculatively reconstructed on the basis of similarity to other buildings," he wrote in Orientations, a Hong Kong-based art journal. "At times restoration verges on Disneyfication."

The outcome is an incongruous spectacle of faux antique temples made with new bricks and cement, housing brown-painted plaster Buddha statues. Re-plastering in one temple has given the four-armed Hindu god Vishnu two extra arms.

"So instead of ending up with a Bagan period temple you end up with a 21st century notion of what a Bagan period temple might have looked like — notions that might have come from cinema and things like that," said Engelhardt.

Nyunt Han, director general of the Department of Archaeology, says his department has old documents that nake precise reconstruction possible.

He said the tower, in the southeastern corner of Bagan, is far from the historical heart where a few tall temples are the tourists' favorite.

"We selected the site with care," he told the AP. "It won't obstruct the ancient beauty."

Bagan's golden age ended in 1287, when it was overrun by the Mongol warrior, Kublai Khan. It became a ghost town, home to bandits and spirits.

Today, sanctions and boycotts of the junta have shrunk tourism to about 75,000 foreign visitors a year.

The cylindrical tower in traditional architectural style is to be completed by 2005, and will have a landscaped garden, a restaurant and a golf course nearby.

The foundation was laid on July 27 by the junta's third-ranking leader, Gen. Khin Nyunt, who drove a golden stake into the ground, placed a gem casket on the site and sprinkled scented water in a Buddhist ceremony.

A towering red-and-white crane now juts out of the construction area, ringed by steel fencing.

UNESCO has also expressed concern about an airport built near the town, and a road that cuts across the historical site.

Still, Engelhardt doesn't think all is lost.

"I don't think it has gone to the point where it is irreversible," he said. "We are not at the point where we could say that Bagan is lost to the world."

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