ASEAN MPs to send mission to Myanmar

ASEAN MPs to send mission to Myanmar

Ivy Susanti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Legislators from seven Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) grouped in the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Caucus (IPC)
will send a fact-finding team to Myanmar to meet government
officials and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Lim Kit Siang, a member of the caucus and Malaysian
parliamentary opposition leader, said that the group would convey
the legislators' aspirations for democratization in the country,
to free Suu Kyi from house arrest and to encourage a tripartite
dialog between the junta, the National League for Democracy (Suu
Kyi's party) and the ethnic groups.

Lim, a parliamentarian from opposition Democratic Action
Party, said that the caucus' president, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, would
write to the Myanmar foreign affairs ministry to inform them of
the visit. Zaid Ibrahim is a Malaysian legislator from the ruling
UMNO party.

Myanmar will take over ASEAN's rotational chairmanship in
2006.

"We will meet the chairman of SPDC (the State Peace and
Development Council), the foreign minister, Aung San Suu Kyi, the
representatives of the pro-democracy forces and ethnic groups
some time in March.

"We also agreed that unless there is improvement in the
political situation in Burma (the former name of Myanmar), with
meaningful democratization and improvement in national
reconciliation, for example a meaningful National Convention,
Burma is not qualified to be chairman of ASEAN in 2006 and this
must be the concern of all ASEAN parliamentarians," Lim told The
Jakarta Post after the caucus meeting here on Wednesday.

National Convention is one of seven measures proposed in the
Myanmar's road map for democracy by the former prime minister
Khin Nyunt after international pressure for democratization and
Suu Kyi's release.

But in a government shake-up in October, Khin Nyunt was
dismissed and detained on a corruption charge. The military junta
announced last November that the convention would be held this
month.

The May convention was canceled because the NLD and two other
political parties refused to attend the convention unless Suu Kyi
was freed. The junta extended Suu Kyi's detention in October.

ASEAN Parliamentary Caucus is a loose grouping of legislators
from Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand. The first informal meeting that served as
an embryo to this caucus was held in Kuala Lumpur last November.

Lim expressed hope that the caucus would develop into various
working groups aside from Myanmar, such as for good governance or
human rights issues.

During the two-day meeting here, which ended on Wednesday, the
ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Caucus formalized the Indonesian
parliamentary caucus. Among Indonesian legislators who are
members of the ASEAN Caucus are Nursyahbani Katjasungkana of the
National Awakening Party and Djoko Susilo of the National Mandate
Party.

Earlier, Ade Nasution, the vice chairman of the Committee for
Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation in Indonesia's House of
Representatives, said the caucus was for individual legislators
who shared the same concerns, and was not officially endorsed by
the House.

"Myanmar is a member of ASEAN, and we can't really intervene
in other countries' affairs," he said.