ASEAN FMs meet against regional tension backdrop

ASEAN FMs meet against regional tension backdrop

YANGON (Agencies): Southeast Asian foreign ministers held an
informal retreat in the Myanmar capital on Monday where they were
expected to make a discreet vote of support for the political
thaw in the military-run country.

The meeting is being held against a backdrop of tension in the
region, with an attempted power grab in the Philippines and fears
of violence in Indonesia as President Abdurrahman Wahid faced a
second censure motion.

The retreat at a plush Yangon golf course, held separately
from the formal Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
ministerial meeting for the first time, was aimed at creating an
environment for a free exchange of views.

But analysts say the talks will instead be hamstrung by the
host of serious political and economic woes preoccupying the
region.

As they arrived in Yangon, ministers were tight-lipped about
the topics they plan to table during the afternoon talks, held
after the group paid a courtesy call on Myanmar's leader Senior
Gen. Than Shwe.

But they did disclose that they would discreetly throw their
weight behind the ongoing political process in Myanmar, where a
senior member of the junta has been meeting in secret with
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We will encourage it," said Philippine Vice President and
Foreign Minister Teofisto Guingona.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar stressed that the
fledgling talks, which may be paving the way for an historic
official dialogue between the two sides, must not be exposed to
the glare of public scrutiny.

"We would like to see Myanmar do what it considers
appropriate. They have done it in their own way and at their own
pace ... outside the domain of publicity and interference by
anyone else," he told AFP on Sunday.

"So it's moving in a positive direction because there is non-
interference. We can encourage, we can persuade, but we cannot do
it with publicity."

He said the ministers did not want their hosts to feel that
ASEAN was meddling in its internal affairs, "but they know they
have to find a solution and they have to ultimately follow the
democratic process."

Observers in Yangon believe the talks have made little
progress since the junta's fourth-ranking leader Lt. Gen. Tin Oo
was killed in a helicopter accident on Feb. 19.

Some say that the extremely sensitive process of finding a
replacement for Tin Oo, who will enter the core of the ruling
junta, has forced a temporary halt in the talks with the
opposition leader.

Others believe the dialogue has hit a more serious hurdle, an
analysis that Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung rejected on
Monday as he entered the talks. "No. It has not stalled," he told
reporters.

Myanmar's military junta said on Monday that its
reconciliation efforts with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi are
very much alive, and asserted that the talks were not a "public
relations stunt" to appease critics.

But there was no time frame for completing the talks because
"it is a timeless business," Foreign Minister Win Aung told
reporters.

He said the progress and details of the talks, which began in
secret in October, will remain confidential and must not be
disclosed.

Win Aung's statement was the most unequivocal sign yet of the
junta's desire to end the political deadlock that has gripped
Myanmar since the generals refused to hand over power to Suu
Kyi's party after it won general elections in 1990.

"The internal process is our business, our own process. And we
are not playing games ... it is not a public relations stunt.
This is for the sake of the people of Myanmar, 52 million
people," Win Aung said.

"We don't play games. If we played games we might have played
a long time ago. We are simple honest people," he said.

On the eve of the retreat, ministers said they hoped the
informal get-together would enable them to catch up on each
other's domestic problems and review the troubling developments
in the region.

"It is an experiment we are trying and I welcome it," said
Singapore's S. Jayakumar.

"We wanted to have a comfort level among foreign ministers to
be able to talk freely ... about subjects that will contribute
towards furthering the cohesiveness and solidarity of ASEAN as a
group," said Malaysia's Syed Hamid.

"There are many things that have happened as a result of the
financial crisis, and as a result of changes in government,
changes in systems, and with globalization and the WTO."

Syed Hamid said that although ASEAN's spotlight will be on the
bloc's economic ministers when they meet in Cambodia this week,
the foreign ministers must help create the environment for better
economic cooperation.

"It will not be wrong for us to focus on some of the economic
issues because nowadays politics is driven by the economy," he
said. "We must have the political will to be able to positively
see how we move on from now."