10/21/2009

News / United States to Engage with Burmese Officials

By Merle David Kellerhals Jr.
Staff Writer



Washington — President Obama believes that “pragmatic engagement” with Burmese authorities is the best means for advancing U.S. goals of a unified, peaceful, prosperous and democratic Burma, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell says.

“The administration launched a review of our Burma policy seven months ago, recognizing that political and humanitarian conditions in Burma were deplorable,” Campbell told the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee October 21.

“Neither sanctions nor engagement, implemented alone, have succeeded in improving those conditions and moving Burma forward on a path to democratic reform,” he said.

But for the first time the Burmese leadership is interested in engaging with the United States, Campbell, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said in his prepared testimony.

The new U.S. policy includes expanded engagement with the Burmese government while maintaining economic pressure through sanctions on the military junta that controls the country. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman said he called the committee hearing to assess the implications of the policy.

“Finding a workable international approach toward reform inside Burma is in our strategic interest and requires working on a solution with stakeholders such as China, India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the European Union,” Berman said.

Campbell said the United States will send a fact-finding mission to Burma in the next few weeks.

“During that trip, we will talk to the Burmese government, representatives of the ethnic nationalities, and the democratic opposition, including the National League for Democracy ‘Uncles’ and Aung San Suu Kyi,” Campbell said. The National League for Democracy, headed by Suu Kyi, won the nation’s last elections in 1990, but has not been allowed to take office. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Suu Kyi has spent most of the last 24 years under house arrest.

Campbell said any engagement with the Burmese ruling junta will involve a long, slow and step-by-step process. The success of efforts at engagement cannot be measured by a handful of meetings, he said.

Campbell led a U.S. delegation in a meeting with senior-level Burmese officials in New York on September 29. He met with U Thaung, the Burmese minister for science and technology and a former ambassador to the United States, and Than Swe, the Burmese permanent representative to the United Nations.

“We laid out our views clearly, and I stressed to U Thaung that this dialogue is an opportunity for Burma if the authorities are ready to move forward,” Campbell said.

The United States wants to address its core concerns of democracy, human rights and nuclear nonproliferation, he told the committee. Other areas where cooperation could be improved include counternarcotics efforts, health, environmental protection and recovery of the remains of World War II-era missing Americans.

“Our dialogue with Burma will supplement rather than replace the sanctions regime that has been at the center of our Burma policy for many years,” Campbell testified. “Lifting or easing sanctions at the outset of a dialogue without meaningful progress on our concerns would be a mistake.”

Campbell said general elections planned by the military junta for 2010 must be assessed on whether opposition and ethnic groups will be able to participate fully. “We do not yet know the date of the elections; the authorities also have not published the election laws,” he said. “We will continue to stress to Burmese authorities the baseline conditions that we consider necessary for any credible electoral process.”

Those conditions include the release of all political prisoners, the ability of all interested parties to stand for election, eliminating restrictions on the news media and ensuring a free and open electoral campaign.

http://www.america.gov/st/peacesec-english/2009/October/20091021150129dmslahrellek0.6297724.html?CP.rss=true

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