RI, Thailand hint Myanmar may decide over ASEAN chair

Ivy Susanti, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

The Indonesian government expected Myanmar itself to resolve the deadlock over its taking of the rotating leadership of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) soon, while Thailand foreign minister hinted that Myanmar could delay its turn to avoid confrontation with the West.

Marty Natalegawa, Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman said however that Myanmar should also provide a rationale for its decision so it would not appear as if Myanmar was succumbing to international pressure.

"Myanmar is likely to announce its decision during the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Vientianne. We hope that every decision it reaches is purely at Myanmar's own initiative, and not just reactive to international demands," Marty told reporters in Jakarta on Friday.

The annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting and the ASEAN Regional Forum, will be held in Vientiane, Laos, from July 24 to July 29.

Marty said that Western nations had acknowledged that ASEAN members themselves had to deal with their neighbor Myanmar on this issue without outside intervention.

"We (ASEAN) want to give room to maneuver for Myanmar, which should be in line with ASEAN's collective interest," he said.

Thailand's foreign minister Kantathi Supamongkon has said he has worked out a compromise to resolve the dispute over Myanmar taking the ASEAN chairmanship in 2006.

The United States and the European Union have threatened to boycott high-level meetings with the group if Myanmar takes over next year without making progress on human rights, including freeing opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Kantathi has given no concrete details of the plan but he told reporters in Washington on Thursday that one way of avoiding a showdown might be for Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, to postpone its turn to chair ASEAN.

"Just as an example, if they were to postpone their chairmanship then there would be a strong incentive for them to also complete the process of national reconciliation so that they could come back and participate actively in ASEAN," he was quoted by Reuters as saying on Friday.

Kantathi also said that Myanmar's military junta had sent Thailand and other nations "a general signal that they would consider the interests of ASEAN above their own interests".

"There is a willingness to discuss issues which previously had been seen as internal," said the foreign minister, who is to meet his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on Friday.

"It's not a black and white picture," he added. "It's a picture with technicolor, so we feel we should look at it in that real light."

Earlier in the day, in Strasbourg, France, the European Parliament called on the 25-nation European Union to state officially it would steer clear of key meetings "should Burma become the chair of ASEAN in 2006 without meeting any of the minimum conditions" on human rights and reform.

Also in Washington, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said that Southeast Asian nations are frustrated and embarrassed by Myanmar's deteriorating human rights record.

"I had a sense that every country in the region I spoke to is frustrated about the lack of progress on Myanmar's refusal to embark on democratic reforms," he said late on Thursday after a regional swing covering Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

"Some of them had a real problem in that Burma (Myanmar) is their neighbor," Zoellick was quoted as saying by AFP on Friday.

Speaking at a private sector forum in Washington on reconstruction of economies ravaged by the Dec. 26 tsunami, Zoellick said he got an impression during his visit that Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia were prodding Myanmar to change in the interest of ASEAN.

He also said that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan had asked Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to try to talk to Myanmar's military chiefs on the need to move towards democracy.

Last year, Yudhoyono, an ex-military general, contested and won Indonesia's first direct presidential elections in the history of the world's most populous Muslim nation.