Countries downstream from the $3.5bn (£2.2bn) dam fear it will affect fish stocks and the livelihoods of millions. The announcement came as leaders from Asia and Europe began a two-day meeting in the Laos capital, Vientiane.
Landlocked Laos is one of South-east Asia's poorest countries and its strategy for development is based on generating electricity from its rivers and selling the power to its neighbours, says the BBC's Jonah Fisher in Bangkok. Xayaburi is being built by a Thai company with Thai money - and almost all of the electricity has been pre-sold to Thailand, our correspondent says.
Countries such as Cambodia and Vietnam point to a report last year that said the project should be delayed while more research was done on the dam's environmental impact. Up to now Laos had promised not to press ahead while those concerns remained....
One of the "4,000 islands" on the Mekong River in or near Laos, shot by Gnilenkov Aleksey, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
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