Asean appeals for help over Burma

Financial Express: 25July, 2006 

South-east Asian countries are deeply frustrated by the lack of political and economic reform, in military-ruled Burma, and want India and China to press for the restoration of democracy, Malaysia's foreign minister said late last week.

In unusually harsh public comments, Syed Hamid Albar, who recently travelled to Burma as an envoy of the Association of South East Asian Nations, said the regional bloc's relations with other countries was being "held hostage" by the political stand-off in Burma, a member since 1997.

Mr Syed Hamid's comments come ahead of a conference of Asean foreign ministers in Kuala Lumpur this week, which will be chaired by Malaysia and will seek to make progress on the issue of Burma. The meeting will be followed by a regional forum including India and China as well as US representatives.

Asean members have supported Burma's junta internationally, while quietly appealing for democratic reforms.

But in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, delivered by his political secretary, Mr Syed Hamid told regional lawmakers that Asean could no longer "defend its member, when that member is not making an attempt to co-operate or help itself".

Rejecting recent claims by the junta that Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Nobel Prize-winning democracy leader, was irrelevant to the country's future, Mr Syed Hamid said her National League for Democracy continues to "command a significant amount of support" from Burmese citizens and that the generals should "engage them ... on equal terms".

The Malaysian foreign minister appealed to China, the regime's biggest patron, and India, which has recently been improving ties with the generals, to do more to press for political changes that would help strengthen the ailing economy and benefit the entire population of Burma.

"As both countries are close friends of Myamnar, they are in a good position to influence Myanmar, politically and economically," he said.

However, south-east Asia's calls for the region's economic giants to nudge the generals towards change are likely to go unheeded, particularly as both China and India are looking to Burma as a source of natural gas to meet their expanding economies' ever-growing thirst for energy.

Wen Jiabao, China's premier, mildly admonished his neighbour in February, telling Soe Win, the visiting Burmese premier, that "China sincerely hopes Myanmar can continue to push forward reconciliation at home, and realise economic development and social progress".

The muted comments were the first high-level indication of Chinese concern about Burma's potentially destabilising impact on the region.

Navtej Sarna, a spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs, said late last week: "India has a wide-ranging engagement with the government of Myanmar. There have been important visits on both sides. On the political process, we've been persuading Myanmar to fully implement its own roadmap to reform, while saying at the same time that this process should be more inclusive."

India's support for the democracy movement in Myanmar has been tempered by concerns at China's growing influence and by its desire to gain access to its neighbour's natural gas reserves off the Arakan coast. India is pursuing the option of a gas pipeline from exploration fields off the coast to its own north-eastern region, enabling New Delhi to avoid having to negotiate transit rights with Bangladesh. Simultaneously, India is helping Myanmar with the Kaladan multimodal transport project linking Calcutta and the port of Sitwe in the province of Arakan.

India views Burma, with which it shares a 1,400 km long border, as a strategic gateway to Asean.

Their land boundary also straddles four restive and insurgency-ridden northeastern states of India - Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.