Malaysia MPs want end to Myanmar's ASEAN chair

Malaysia MPs want end to Myanmar's ASEAN chair

Reuters, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian government lawmakers want Myanmar to be stripped of its turn to lead Southeast Asia's top political grouping next year unless it pursues democratic reform, an official said on Tuesday.

Ruling coalition lawmakers said after a meeting presided over by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi that they would table a parliamentary motion calling for Myanmar's chairmanship of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to be suspended.

"We will ask for Myanmar's turn to be the chairman of ASEAN to be suspended and given to other countries until democratic reforms are carried out," The Star newspaper quoted Nazri Abdul Aziz, minister in the premier's department, as saying.

ASEAN's members -- Brunei, Cambodia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia and the Philippines -- are loath to interfere in a member's internal affairs, so Malaysia's motion would amount to an unusually blunt move.

Nazri's spokesman confirmed the report and said the motion's wording had not been finalized.

"If democracy doesn't prevail in Myanmar many of the members are not willing to extend the convention (of passing Myanmar the chair)," the spokesman said.

Myanmar's military junta had promised to set the country back onto the road to democracy, a plan that was formally supported by the 10-member ASEAN in 2003. But the generals have failed to persuade its neighbors and the West that it is on course.

Myanmar's opposition leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, is still under house arrest and Khin Nyunt, the prime minister who introduced the "roadmap" -- which Western governments have derided as a sham -- was purged late last year.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy has boycotted talks on a new constitution. The junta insists the charter will lead toward democracy but critics say it will entrench military rule.

The junta has released more than 14,000 prisoners since November last year, soon after Khin Nyunt's ouster, but hundreds of political prisoners remain in detention.

Malaysia is due to assume the rotating annual chairmanship of ASEAN in July. As the country due to hand over the leadership to Myanmar in 2006, it is expected to lead efforts on the issue of Myanmar, seen by some within ASEAN as a source of embarrassment that hurts the entire grouping.

As chair, Yangon would host a summit of the bloc's leaders as well as key economic and security meetings with ASEAN dialogue partners, including the United States which slapped tougher sanctions on Myanmar after Suu Kyi was detained in May 2003.

The U.S. State Department said last November that Myanmar had complicated U.S. dealings with ASEAN, and it left open whether senior U.S. officials would participate in meetings held there.

"By holding these meetings in Rangoon, it (ASEAN) runs a serious risk that countries which attended regularly for a quarter century will not show," a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, said in Bangkok on Monday.

"I personally hope the United States does not go".