Junta leader to attend A-A Summit

Junta leader to attend A-A Summit

Agencies, Yangon

The leader of Myanmar's ruling military government planned to attend an Asia-Africa summit in Jakarta next week, days after Yangon came under renewed pressure for its human rights record, a diplomat said on Wednesday.

Myanmar has faced growing pressure not to chair the 10-member ASEAN in 2006 after other nations in the regional grouping said they were growing increasingly frustrated by Yangon's slow pace of democratic reform and its treatment of political prisoners.

Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations sidestepped the issue at a gathering in the Philippines this week by postponing a decision on whether Myanmar should chair the group.

Senior General Than Shwe would leave for the Indonesian capital on April 20 to attend the summit on April 23, a senior Indonesian diplomat told Reuters.

In a separate development, a Philippine presidential palace statement said that President Gloria Arroyo is to make a four-day trip to Indonesia from April 21 to take part in a summit of Asian and African countries.

Analysts and diplomats in Yangon say Than Shwe is expected to seek bilateral meetings with ASEAN counterparts on the sidelines of the summit to discuss the issue of Yangon's chairmanship.

An ASEAN diplomat speculated Myanmar might press ahead and assume the grouping's rotating chair, which is based on alphabetical order. Malaysia is the current chair.

"So far as I can see, they will not give up the chair. They will go ahead. I'm not sure whether they will yield to outside demands," said the diplomat who asked not to be identified.

The United States and Europe have threatened not to attend any ASEAN meetings hosted by Myanmar. Washington has also said it might withhold funding to several development projects in the region, particularly in poorer Southeast Asian nations.

Europe and the United States have shunned Myanmar and slapped sanctions on Yangon since the military government's latest detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, in May 2003.

ASEAN members want Yangon to put a timetable on its road map to democracy and to free Suu Kyi.

Yangon-based analysts hold different views on the issue.

"They have three options: give in to outside demands and take the chair, take the chair without doing anything, or give up the chair on a reasonable pretext," a local analyst said.

"The first choice is most unlikely. They don't want to release her (Suu Kyi) before they finish drawing up the constitution," he said, referring to a drawn-out process to draft a new charter and called a sham by the West.

"If they choose the second option, there will be some complicated consequences for the whole group."

"We think they are likely to give up the chair, citing they are very busy and preoccupied with implementing the political road map," said the analyst in Yangon on Wednesday.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said on Monday it would be better for Myanmar to make a decision soon to avoid dragging ASEAN into Yangon's domestic politics.

Singapore and several other ASEAN members have shown signs of impatience with Yangon's slow reform progress, in a rare breach of the group's long-held principle of non-interference in members' internal affairs.

Yangon has promised to bring the country back to democracy through a series of reforms based on a seven-stage roadmap laid out in 2003 by then prime minister Khin Nyunt, who was purged last October.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.