ASEAN relieved as Myanmar skips chair

ASEAN relieved as Myanmar skips chair

Darren Schuettler, Reuters/Vientiane

Army-ruled Myanmar will skip its turn as ASEAN chairman in 2006,
defusing a simmering row between the southeast Asian bloc and the
West over the junta's lack of democratic reform and its detention
of Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We agreed that once Myanmar is ready to take its turn to be
the ASEAN chair, it can do so," Lao Foreign Minister Somsavat
Lengsavad said on Tuesday, reading out a joint statement by the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Myanmar wanted to focus its full attention on efforts at
national reconciliation and restoring democracy after more than
four decades of military rule, the statement said.

"We expressed our sincere appreciation to the government of
Myanmar for not allowing its national preoccupation to affect
ASEAN solidarity and cohesiveness," Somsavat said, adding that
2006 would be a "critical year" for the former Burma.

Few western governments believe Yangon's democracy rhetoric,
especially while Nobel laureate Suu Kyi -- whose National League
for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990 only to be
denied power by the army -- remains under house arrest.

On the eve of the ASEAN meeting in Vientiane, British Foreign
Office minister Ian Pearson had repeated U.S. and European
threats to boycott ASEAN proceedings in 2006 if the generals took
up the reins without embracing any meaningful political reform.

The Philippines, the next in line for a role which rotates
alphabetically, will now become chairman after Malaysia finishes
its stint in mid-2006.

"The Philippines would like to express its appreciation to
Myanmar for not allowing its national preoccupation to affect
ASEAN's solidarity and cohesiveness," the Philippine foreign
ministry said in a statement.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said the decision
removed a "thorny problem", although he added the group would
have supported Yangon if it had insisted on assuming the chair.

"It was a relief to us," he told reporters."Their domestic
problems and our interests as a region had been intertwined. It's
good that these will be decoupled."

ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam, has been trying to tease political reforms out of
Yangon's generals through "constructive engagement".

Conversely, Europe and the United States have favored
sanctions in an attempt to force the restoration of multi-party
civilian government to the former British colony, which has been
under army rule since a 1962 coup.

Neither approach has made any headway and ASEAN, which
admitted Myanmar in 1997 in the hope of showing it the benefits
of political and economic openness, has found itself tainted by
the intransigence of its "black sheep" member.

But the EU saw Myanmar's decision as progress.

"The position that the ASEAN countries have taken, we think,
is a good one that goes in the direction that the European Union
wanted," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told a news
conference in Brussels.

"Whatever can be done to have that country evolve towards
democratic values is worth doing," he added.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer praised ASEAN
efforts in trying to bring Yangon's generals in from the cold.

"The ASEAN countries have done much more than people realize
to promote political reform in Myanmar and also to argue for the
release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest," he said.