Thaksin offers to act as mediator in Myanmar crisis
Thaksin offers to act as mediator in Myanmar crisis
Agencies, Bangkok/Yangon
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Thursday he was willing to act as a mediator to resolve the political deadlock in Myanmar where opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is being held in detention.
"I am ready to do the job because I want to see the development of democracy in this region, and I think that it is possible and there is an exit," Thaksin told reporters.
The premier said he had asked Myanmar's Home Affairs Minister Tin Hlaing to convey to Myanmar's leader Senior General Than Shwe a Thai proposal or "road map" to break the impasse in the military-run country.
"I am confident that the details in the road map can be implemented for Myanmar to achieve democracy and national reconciliation," he said after meeting earlier with Tin Hlaing, who was attending a five-nations drugs meeting in the northern town of Chiang Mai.
Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai on Thursday floated the road map at a meeting of Asian and European foreign ministers on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
He suggested creating an international forum to prod Myanmar to free Suu Kyi, which would involve Southeast Asian nations, the European Union, China and Japan among others.
Myanmar showed no signs of bending to international pressure after state-run media carried fresh denunciations of Suu Kyi and said stiffer sanctions against the junta would backfire.
"We are ready to perform this duty because we want to see democracy prosper in this region. I have ways and means to do so," Shinawatra said in Bangkok.
The United States and the European Union have threatened more sanctions, while key donor Japan has halted new aid.
Thailand, afraid harsher sanctions on Yangon will unleash a flood of economic migrants, has floated the "road map" idea to democracy.
Myanmar's military government took Suu Kyi into "protective custody" on May 30 after her supporters were ambushed by a projunta gang during a political tour of the country's north.
As international pressure on the junta to release Suu Kyi builds, Thaksin will also discuss the Myanmar crisis with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad this weekend on the Malaysian island of Langkawi.
Thailand has an historically prickly relationship with its neighbor Myanmar, and rarely comments on its internal affairs. However, it has made an unusually frank criticism of the junta's recent treatment of Suu Kyi.
Mahathir has also been publicly critical, warning that Myanmar may as a last resort face expulsion from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations if it continues defying world pressure to free the 1991 Nobel peace prize winner.