EU, ASEAN look to turn page on Myanmar issue

EU, ASEAN look to turn page on Myanmar issue

Jitendra Joshi, Agence France-Presse, Brussels

The European Union and Southeast Asia were set Monday to try to put years of acrimony over Myanmar behind them in foreign ministers' talks focused on trade and terrorism.

The two-yearly meeting between two of the world's biggest trading blocs was to take place on EU territory for the first time with an official from military-run Myanmar in attendance.

The EU has temporarily lifted a visa ban against junta leaders to allow Myanmar's deputy foreign minister, Khin Maung Win, to attend the Brussels gathering with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which was to start at 1500 GMT (10 p.m. Monday, Jakarta time).

His presence is allowed under an exception to the visa ban that permits Myanmar junta leaders to attend meetings in the European Union that discuss human rights and democracy, officials said.

The last time the 15-nation EU was to welcome ASEAN foreign ministers was in 1998, a year after Myanmar joined the 10-member southeast Asian club. But Europe refused to invite anyone from the military regime and the meeting was eventually switched to Laos.

Hailing Khin's attendance as a "big breakthrough", ASEAN is hoping that the two-day Brussels meeting will help it switch the focus in its EU relationship back to commerce. The region has in recent years lost its allure in the eyes of European investors to China.

"For years Myanmar has been a thorn in the side of a dialog, but it's really just one country out of 25," a senior ASEAN diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Why let one country dominate the entire dialog? There are other areas we should be focusing on -- transnational crime, terrorism, trade."

The EU remains unhappy about the Myanmar military's refusal to relinquish power in the former British colony, and the slow pace of dialog between the junta and opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

"There is a great deal of EU concern about the reform process there, which appears to be stalling," said a British diplomat.

"We would like to find a way to reinvigorate that, and get Burma to make a credible commitment to constitutional rule," he said.

But the EU does not want Myanmar to distract from more pressing concerns with ASEAN, another EU official added, "because we are keen to reinvigorate that relationship".

The European Commission -- the EU's executive arm -- is formulating a new strategy towards southeast Asia due for release in the spring, to update a relationship that is based on a bilateral accord signed in 1980.

Since then, both the EU and ASEAN have been transformed through the addition of new members and the development of a broader remit beyond their traditional economic concerns.

In 2001, the EU was ASEAN's second-largest export market and third-largest trading partner after the United States and Japan. ASEAN exports to the EU were estimated at 65.7 billion euros ($70 billion), while the region's imports from the EU were valued at 42.2 billion euros, according to European Commission figures.

Those figures would have been higher but for a shift in European companies' interest to other parts of Asia, principally to China, according to ASEAN Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong.

"I think a dialog between the ministers of the EU and ASEAN will foster a more positive climate to encourage more people to look at ASEAN," he said.

The "more positive climate" should extend to Myanmar, Ong said, calling for "an adult exchange of views".

Both sides will find themselves on safer ground in pledging anew to combat terrorism in the wake of the devastating bombing of a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali and a spate of attacks in the Philippines.