US senator nixes Myanmar trip over nuclear concern
AP / June 03, 2010

A U.S. senator on Thursday postponed a trip to Myanmar, saying it is a bad time to visit because of new allegations that its military regime is collaborating with North Korea to develop a nuclear program.

A statement issued by the office of Sen. Jim Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, said the allegations had not been substantiated, but there were also concerns that Myanmar had broken a U.N. embargo on buying arms from North Korea.

"Until there is further clarification on these matters, I believe it would be unwise and potentially counterproductive for me to visit Burma," said his statement, referring to Myanmar by its former name. Webb was supposed to go to Myanmar late Thursday.

Myanmar's military regime is under economic and political sanctions by many Western nations because of its poor record on human rights and its failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. The leader of the pro-democracy opposition, Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained for about 14 of the past 20 years.

Webb's statement cited news reports it did not identify. "From the initial accounts, a defecting officer from the Burmese military claims direct knowledge of such plans, and reportedly has furnished documents to corroborate his claims," his statement said.

The website of the Doha-based Al-Jazeera satellite TV station said Thursday it will broadcast a program Friday with evidence that "Myanmar's ruling generals have started a program to build nuclear weapons (and) are trying to develop long-range missiles."

The trip by Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, had been scheduled to follow a visit by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell last month, and would have overlapped with that of Premier Wen Jiabao of China, Myanmar's closest and most powerful ally, who arrived Wednesday in Myanmar.

On his current Asian tour, Webb has visited South Korea and Thailand.
Campbell during his visit last month cautioned Myanmar's military regime that it should abide by U.N. sanctions that prohibit buying arms from North Korea.

A U.N. Security Council resolution bans all North Korean arms exports, authorizes member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo and requires them to seize and destroy any goods transported in violation of the sanctions.

Campbell said that Myanmar's leadership had agree to abide by the U.N. resolution, but that "recent developments" called into question its commitment.

At a news conference late Thursday in Bangkok, Webb said he still strongly believed that continuing a dialogue between the U.S. and Myanmar is important for maintaining a strategic balance in Southeast Asia and encouraging more open government in Myanmar, "but a productive dialogue is only achievable in an environment where we don't have these other issues so outstanding."

He also said he thought "China should step forward and assume a bigger role and become more openly involved in solving a range of issues" inlcuding Iran, Burma, North Korea, as well as transnational problems.

Webb also called for President Obama to "immediately appoint a special envoy to address the entire range of issues regarding relations between the United States and Burma" — an action mandated by U.S. law.

Chinese PM visits military-ruled Myanmar
DPA / June 02, 2010

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Myanmar on Wednesday for talks with the military junta chief who has promised elections later this year.

Mr. Wen, the first Chinese premier to visit Myanmar since 1994, is scheduled to hold talks with Senior General Than Shwe in the military capital Naypyitaw on Thursday, diplomat sources said.

He was scheduled to visit Yangon’s famed Shwedagon Pagoda on Wednesday and fly to Naypyitaw, 320 kilometres north of Yangon, on Thursday.

China, one of Myanmar’s few international allies, has expressed concern over the junta’s efforts to force several ethnic minority groups in the north—eastern part of the country to lay down their arms and join government—led militias prior to polls this year.

Several groups such as the Wa, Shan and Karen have refused to disarm, raising fears of fighting in the Shan State, which borders China’s southern province of Yunnan.

Last year, Myanmar troops attacked the Kokang, a minority group that is ethnically Chinese, who had refused to surrender their arms to the government. The attack forced thousands of Kokang to flee into China.

While in Naypyitaw, Mr. Wen is also scheduled to meet his Myanmar counterpart Thein Sein and sign agreements boosting economic ties.

“He will sign the bilateral agreements on economy and trade in Naypyitaw when he meets the Myanmar leaders,” a Chinese diplomat in Yangon said.
According to official figures, trade volume between Myanmar and China was 2.9 billion dollars in 2009. Chinese investment had reached 1.8 billion dollars by January, accounting for 11.5 per cent of direct foreign investment in the country.

EU seeking deal on election mission to Myanmar
AFP / May 26, 2010

The European Union is seeking a deal with Myanmar to send a mission to Yangon to discuss the country's upcoming elections, a Spanish official said Wednesday during an EU-ASEAN conference in Madrid.

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton hopes to "finalise" agreement on an "exploratory" EU mission during talks in the Spanish capital with Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Win, said the official, Jose Eugenio Salarich, in charge of Asia-Pacific affairs at the Spanish foreign ministry.

The EU said last month it hopes to send a team to Myanmar to discuss the elections, scheduled by the end of November, amid concerns the vote will not be free and fair.

The National League for Democracy (NLD), party of Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, is boycotting the polls, the first for 20 years, as it would have been forced to oust its iconic leader and recognise the junta's constitution if it had signed up.

Suu Kyi's NLD won the last elections in 1990, but the military junta, in power since 1962, refused to recognise those results.

Since then the Nobel Peace prize winner has spent much of the time under house arrest.

Ashton will make clear to U Nyan Win that "if the Myanmar authorities want a credible political process they have to respect a minimum standard of democracy," Salarich said.

The junta in Yangon must include "all political parties -- government parties and opposition parties" and also "release Suu Kyi and other political prisoners," he said.

But he warned that the EU mission would be "very complicated, very delicate" with "no guarantees" that it will be able to see opposition leaders.
Myanmar said earlier this month that it does not want foreign election observers at the polls.

The talks between Ashton and U Nyan Win are scheduled on the sidelines of a one-day ministerial conference between foreign ministers and senior officials from the 27 EU members and the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The global economic crisis, security issues and climate change are also on the agenda.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, opened the conference with a call for greater cooperation to confront the crisis.

"Our friends in ASEAN are emerging (from the crisis) with less problems than Europe is experiencing, thanks to its dynamism and the general situation in Asia and the Pacific," he told the delegates.

He said EU hopes ASEAN can take "an open and comprehensive attitude to jointly confront the temptations of protectionism, open markets, create a favourable environment for investments and cooperate in efforts the economic and institutional framework at a global financial level."

The ministers are also expected to discuss relations with China, given the role that the Asian giant plays in trade with both the EU and ASEAN.

An ASEAN-China free trade pact came into effect earlier this year, establishing the world's biggest free-trade zone in terms of population, covering nearly two billion consumers.

The European Union is the world's largest market for Chinese exports, but the bloc has voiced concerns about growing protectionism and unequal treatment for European firms in China.

Salarich said the ministers will also discuss the tensions between North and South Korea.

But he said the recent turmoil in Thailand is not on the agenda as it is an "internal situation" in a member country, although the country's representative at the talks, Jitriya Pinthong, deputy permanent secretary of the foreign ministry, may make a statement about it.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand and Vietnam.

US 'troubled' by Myanmar election preparations: envoy
AFP / May 09, 2010

A top US envoy voiced concern Sunday about election preparations in Myanmar ahead of his visit there for talks with the ruling junta and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We're troubled by much of what we've seen and we have very real concerns about the elections laws and the environment that's been created," said Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

"Our team would like the opportunity to engage directly and see what the plans are in terms of the overall approach of the elections," he told a news conference in Bangkok.

Campbell was due to fly to Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw on Sunday for talks with government officials, followed by a meeting on Monday with Suu Kyi, who has been has been in detention for 14 of the past 20 years.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) was forcibly dissolved Thursday under widely criticised laws governing elections that are scheduled for later this year, the first in two decades.

Campbell met the 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate in Yangon last November when he became the highest-ranking US official to visit Myanmar in 14 years.

President Barack Obama's administration last year launched a policy of engaging Myanmar's rulers in a bid to promote democracy and improve human rights, but has since sharply criticised the junta's approach to elections.

"I think it's critical to have a dialogue with the government as well as key figures outside the government," Campbell said.

"We will be meeting with elements of the NLD. We will meet with other elements as well," he said.

A faction within the NLD said Friday that it would form a new political party but has not decided whether to run in the elections.

Former top NLD members have said they would urge the US envoy to push for a dialogue between the junta and the democracy campaigners.

"We will discuss with him the matter of the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners" as well as the need for the regime to make its election plans more credible, said Tin Oo, who was the NLD's vice-chairman.

"Daw" is a term of respect in Myanmar.

The NLD refused to meet a May 6 deadline to re-register as a party -- a move that would have forced it to expel its own leader -- and boycotted the vote, which critics say is a sham designed to legitimise the junta's grip on power.

Under election legislation unveiled in March, anyone serving a prison term is banned from being a member of a political party and parties that fail to obey the rule will be abolished.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962. The NLD won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the junta never allowed it to take office and the latest elections laws nullified the results of that vote.

The NLD was founded in 1988 after a popular uprising against the military junta that left thousands of people dead.

Years of persecution by the junta has left the NLD in poor shape, and the purist stance taken by the leadership, many aged in their 80s and 90s, has been questioned by a new generation favouring a more pragmatic approach.

The US State Department had said Campbell would only visit if he were allowed to see Suu Kyi and other opposition members, and a Myanmar official said Saturday he would be allowed to meet the democracy icon on Monday.

Campbell, who is expected to return to Bangkok later Monday, was unlikely to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein but would instead hold talks with officials including Information Minister Kyaw Hsan, the official said.

Myanmar opposition holds last event as legal party
AP / May 05, 2010

The party of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, founded more than 20 years ago to challenge military rule in Myanmar, held a final gathering Wednesday at its headquarters before its forced dissolution.

The National League for Democracy, which won a 1990 election but was denied power by the army, held an early celebration of Suu Kyi's June 19 birthday, an occasion on which it gives children of political prisoners financial aid for their education.

The League declined to reregister as a party this year, which new election laws required to contest an election supposed to be held sometime later this year. The League says the laws are undemocratic and unfair, and its non-registration is tantamount to an election boycott.

At the party's central office in Yangon, desks were being cleared, paper files tied up and locked away in cupboards and party property was inventoried. Under the law, the party becomes "null and void," at midnight Thursday.

However, Suu Kyi has instructed her party not to take down the party signboard or party flag featuring the "fighting peacock" after the deadline. She told her party members through the party spokesman that "she will never turn her back to the people or her struggle for democracy."

It is not clear what action authorities could take against such activity. The junta is intolerant of dissent, and has long repressed its opponents. According to the U.N. and human rights groups, there are more than 2,000 political prisoners nationwide.

Meanwhile, Myanmar's highest court rejected an application by Suu Kyi to annul some articles of the party registration law. Her filing in High Court last week challenged rules that included a bar on a convicted person being a member of a political party.

Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years, was convicted last year of illegally harboring a visitor, an eccentric American who swam uninvited to her lakeside home.

The court also rejected an application to have seated the parliament elected in 1990.

About 150 members of the National League for Democracy gathered at their dilapidated two-story headquarters near the foot of Yangon's Shwedagon pagoda for Suu Kyi's 65th birthday celebration. Several foreign diplomats also attended.

"We cannot hold Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday at the party headquarters on June 19 though we will hold a religious ceremony at one of the member's house on Daw Suu's birthday," said Dr. May Win Myint, an elected candidate in 1990 and a senior party member. 'Daw' is a term of respect for older women.

"We are wrapping up our party work at the headquarters but we will carry out our political activities in any possible manner and continue with other social welfare projects," she said.

Party spokesman Nyan Win said the party "may cease to exist under the law" but will continue to carry out social activities while party members will individually engage in political activities.

"We will survive as long as we have public support," Nyan Win said.
The new election laws in fact allowed the League's branch offices to reopen earlier this year, some seven years after they were shut by the government, which was anxious to demonstrate it was allowing the resumption of political activity ahead of the planned polls.

It remained unclear whether the branch offices would be permitted to stay open in some capacity after the party's headquarters closes.