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.