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The Hindu: A mellowing junta?
A mellowing junta?
The Hindu
15 August 1999
In one sense, the ASEAN policy of engagement with the Yangon
regime
has given the international community some leeway in dealing
with the
junta, writes P.S. SURYANARAYANA.
IS A new modus vivendi emerging imperceptibly between the
military
government in Yangon and the international community,
particularly
Myanmar's South East Asian neighbours? Or, is a storm in the
wake of
the current phase of low-key activism by Myanmar's
``pro-democracy''
campaigners in exile. The latest noisy demonstration in
Bangkok against
the Myanmarese junta would have passed off as a non-event but
for the
prying urges of photo journalists.
Whatever the answers to these imponderable questions, the Yangon
authorities have lost no time warning the administrators and
people
against unrest being stoked up by an alleged alliance between
``neo-colonialists'' and Myanmarese activists owing
allegiance to Ms.
Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD).
The
military government, known as the State Peace and Development
Council
(SPDC), is looking over its shoulders to prevent a new
upsurge of
dramatic ``pro-democracy'' agitations by either the NLD
activists or their
sympathisers in exile or even by foreigners sneaking into
Myanmar in the
guise of tourists as some of them did last year.
At another level, there is some relief for the SPDC. It did
not have to
cope with an avalanche of criticism at the latest meeting of
the ARF (the
Association of South East Asian Nations' Regional Forum) in
Singapore
unlike as it happened at the time of a similar meeting in
Manila last year.
Ms. Suu Kyi's roadside stand-off with the Yangon authorities,
which led
to a stinging criticism of the SPDC by the U.S. during the
ARF meeting
last year, is now almost faded memory. In fact, the tone and
tenor of the
utterances by the U.S. Secretary of State, Ms. Madeleine
Albright, at this
year's ARF session points to Washington's qualitatively
different concerns
now.
Ms. Albright said ``the United States urges Burma to shift
direction and
begin a dialogue with the democratic opposition, including
(Ms.) Aung
San Suu Kyi, and other representative groups.'' In a language of
diplomatic courtesy, as distinct from her usual stridency on
this theme, she
told the ARF, ``we (the U.S.) support the U.N. role in
encouraging this
(idea of dialogue) and (we) are disappointed that Special
Envoy DeSoto
has not yet been able to return to Burma despite several
requests (by the
U.N.) over the past six months.'' The U.S. was calling upon
the SPDC to
``allow such a visit as soon as possible.''
Though there was nothing in her message to indicate a shift in
Washington's stance on the democracy puzzle in Myanmar, there
was a
hint of possible intersection, as different from a
convergence, of the
relative new ways of the U.S. and Myanmar. Ms. Albright's
commendation of a U.N. role was matched by the Myanmar Foreign
Minister, Mr. U. Win Aung's separate response, avoiding a
hostile
rejection of the idea of a special envoy visiting his country.
Even as Ms. Albright made no concession to the SPDC by
setting the
U.S. sights lower on a democratic resurgence as Myanmar's
destiny, Mr.
U. Win, too, did not yield ground on any substantive issue.
He repeated
the SPDC's more recent refrain of Myanmar being headed for a
rendezvous with democracy at an indefinite future date and of
the
Council's more immediate compulsions of sorting out assorted
ethnic-political problems. However, there was no mistaking
the regime's
new willingness to experiment with a policy of tentative
engagement with
the international community in the present circumstances
defined, in part,
by a certain loss of momentum, not a reversal of course, of the
pro-democracy movement.
More central to the SPDC's calculations is the recent
detente, as it were,
between it and the European Union, which has considered it
worthwhile
to talk to the Yangon regime in a logical extension of a
theory which, in
the first place, provided a rationale for the West's new
engagement with
China.
At stake is the possibility of redefining the recent,
absolutely informal,
proposal by some officials of the World Bank and the U.N.
that the
Yangon regime be granted economic aid and goaded into making
peace
with Ms. Suu Kyi and/or other leaders of the democracy
movement. The
idea is still just that, but international interlocutors can
no longer point to
any permanently locked doors in Yangon.
In one sense, the ASEAN's policy of engagement with the Yangon
regime - the association's primary reasoning for admitting
Myanmar into
its fold - has given the international community some leeway
in dealing
with the SPDC at this time. Given the ASEAN's first
principles, the
association as also India, whose External Affairs Minister
met the
Myanmarese Foreign Minister on the sidelines of the ARF
meeting, has
not been inquisitional about the SPDC record in internal
politics. Not
surprisingly, Mr. U. Win Aung said at the latest ASEAN
meetings that ``a
country's affairs should be handled by its own people.''
A concept of ``enhanced interaction'' among the ASEAN states, as
popularised by Thailand, would be put to test by its Foreign
Minister, Mr.
Surin Pitsuwan, in his stewardship of the association's
standing committee
from now. Myanmar may attract greater attention in the
context of Mr.
Surin's agenda of human rights, democracy and human resource
development across South East Asia.
It is, however, possible that trans-national issues such as
the illicit trade in
drugs and environmental protection will bring Myanmar into new
international focus as much as the democracy riddle does. Ms.
Albright
has recently identified Myanmar as ``a threat to regional
stability'' because
of the SPDC's ``failure to prevent widescale narcotics
production and
trafficking activities.'' She also blamed the SPDC for its
``repressive
policies'' at home which ``created strife and caused the
outflow of
refugees.'' But the anticipated Thai focus on ``future
security threats,'' in
the form of ``economic disruptions'', ``illicit drugs'' and
the like, could
bring the SPDC to account on a range of issues other than the
Suu Kyi
question.