India says it won't pressure Myanmar junta

Associate Press: 27July, 2006

KUALA LUMPUR: India wants to see democracy in Myanmar, but doesn't favor pressuring its military junta while the world turns a blind eye to other dictatorships and undemocratic governments in the region, an Indian minister said Thursday.

The stand was conveyed by Rao Inderjit Singh, the junior minister for defense procurement, to Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of a regional security meeting.

"While we ourselves espouse democracy, and like democracy to prevail we still have to live with our neighbors. We don't choose our neighbors,'' Singh told The Associated Press.

He pointed out that India's neighbour on its western border, Pakistan, is also a dictatorship and "a third country on the northern frontier is also not democratic,'' a reference to China.

"So you can't only talk about only one neighbour, which is Myanmar and not have the same treatment accorded by the international community to others,'' he said.

"India would like Myanmar to go democratic but we don't want to push them ... let them go at their own pace,'' said Singh.

The comments, although a reiteration of India's official stand, will come as a disappointment for democrats in the region who look up to India, the world's biggest democracy.

However, India's tacit support for the junta stems from key strategic compulsions.

Myanmar borders India's remote and often lawless northeastern states, riven by insurgencies. 

Myanmar's forces have cooperated with India in cracking down on the insurgents when they cross over the border, denying them sanctuaries.

To Indian officials, this makes Myanmar "a good neighbour'' as opposed to Pakistan, which India accuses of harboring and aiding Muslim militants waging a separatist insurgency in the Himalayan region of Kashmir. 

Pakistan denies actively aiding the insurgents, but says it provides them moral support.

India also wants to maintain its influence over Myanmar to prevent it from moving too close to traditional rival China.

Indian officials say their position is no different from Myanmar's neighbours in ASEAN, which at their annual foreign ministers' meeting this week called for allowing the Myanmar junta to change at its own pace.

The junta has attracted international condemnation for jailing hundreds of political dissidents including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and dragging its feet on allowing democratic freedom.