Activists urge India to change stance on Burma

Mungpi
Mizzima News: 29July, 2006

New Delhi: Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Ethnic Nationalities Council have urged India to reconsider its policy on Burma.

Ethnic activists visiting New Delhi this week said Indian politicians should review the country’s policy of engaging with the Burmese military.

David Taw, leader of the ENC’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told Mizzima, “What we are saying is that . . . if the problems in Burma are not resolved or if there is no genuine national reconciliation then the problems of Burma would soon become regional problems”.

“And India, being an immediate neighbour to Burma, would face the consequences,” David Taw said.

With the introduction of India’s ‘look east’ policy, the country has actively engaged in trade and diplomatic relations with Burma.

On Thursday, India's junior minister for defense, Rao Inderjit Singh, who is attending the Asian Region Forum in Kuala Lumpur, told Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer in a bilateral meeting that India supported democracy in Burma but was not ready to pressure the government over reforms.

“India would like [Burma] to go democratic but we don't want to push them . . . Let them go at their own pace,” Singh was quoted as saying.

But David Taw argued that as India was a close neighbour of Burma, it needed to play a role in reforms.

“If India continues to support the military regime and if the situation deteriorates, then India cannot ignore it and should be responsible for it,” he said.