Remember Where You Read It First
Yes, there is going to be a settlement in Myanmar
By ROGER MITTON
Monday, August 27, 2001
Asiaweek
Over the weekend I interviewed Chanin Vongkusolkit, the CEO of Banpu, a leading Thai company in the power production and mining sector. As well as operating in Thailand, Banpu has plants in Indonesia and Vietnam. "We are also looking at Myanmar," said Chanin. "There is talk that Suu Kyi may be brought into the government, so things can change." His comment -- which echoes that made recently by Thailand's defense minister, Gen. Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, who has close ties with his Myanmar counterparts -- indicates how business perceptions are changing for the good as a result of the current dialogue between pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the military rulers in Yangon.
After speaking to Chanin, I grabbed a taxi for a lunch appointment with an ASEAN diplomat who tracks Myanmar affairs and whose country has a strong intelligence network there. The diplomat told me that their reports indicate the talks are proceeding on track and he cautioned me not to pay any attention to the negative statements being written in the Bangkok press and most of the Western media. He asked me if I had heard that Myanmar's paramount leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, had recently visited Suu Kyi. I told him I had not. He said that his country believes the ageing Than Shwe wants a settlement before he leaves office. I said I agreed with that reading and I asked him if he'd heard about speculation that Than Shwe may visit New York to address the United Nations General Assembly after he visits the Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad in October. He said he had not.
We both agreed that it is doubtful Than Shwe will go to New York -- unless some provisional agreement has been reached with Suu Kyi by that date. Is it possible? The answer is: Yes, but it seems too soon. At best, it would probably be an announcement of confidence-building steps rather than the formation of a transitional government. Either way, the timing would be apposite, since it would come almost exactly one year since the dialogue began. Let us look back briefly and review the progress coldly and dispassionately. We know the meetings began at Than Shwe's instigation soon after Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for trying to take the train out of Yangon.
We know that Razali Ismail, the pointman for both Mahathir and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan,helped facilitate the talks. And we know that Maj.-Gen. Kyaw Win (aka Ko Kyaw Win), a sophisticated acolyte of Than Shwe, is conducting the talks for the regime at Suu Kyi's residence. Kyaw Win and Suu Kyi are the same age and have long known and respected each other.
We also know that since the talks began, almost 200 political prisoners have been released, including the Aug. 26 freeing from house arrest of top party leaders Tin Oo and Aung Shwe. We know, too, that the NLD's headquarters and 18 other branch offices in the Yangon area have been allowed to reopen and operate as normal. I know this personally since I've been to the NLD office half a dozen times this year and I've spoken to central committee members, including the go-between U Lwin, who sees Suu Kyi every week and reports back to the party hierarchy. The regime's scathing attacks on Suu Kyi and her party in the controlled domestic press have ceased. For its part, the NLD has stopped holding regular meetings at the party offices that were essentially denunciations of the regime. So both sides are being nice to each other.
We also know that the United States and Britain, previously two of the most vituperative critics of the regime, have not merely ceased their own denunciations but have begun to put out conciliatory statements about how they expect progress from the talks and how, perhaps, after all, engagement is the way to go. The changing U.S. position is particularly intriguing. On February 1, a brain-storming session was held at Washington's Georgetown University -- which, for the first time at an American function of this sort, openly used the name Myanmar in its subject title. Along with academics and diplomats, including the Myanmar ambassador in Washington and the former Chinese ambassador in Yangon, top officials from the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and the military services attended. Ralph "Skip" Boyce, the deputy assistant secretary of state, was among those who spoke. Boyce is the State Department's top man on Myanmar and previously attended both the Chilston Park and Walker Hill meetings that attempted to thrash out a political solution.
Soon after the Georgetown University conclave, on Feb. 26, Boyce took off for Yangon to see Khin Nyunt and Suu Kyi. He visited both parties in the company of the U.S. head of mission in Yangon, Priscilla Clapp, a noted hardliner in her dealings with the regime. Yet, a little over a month later, on April 18, Clapp gave a remarkably conciliatory speech to the Asia Society in Washington and spoke of "rays of hope" in Myanmar as a result of the talks between Suu Kyi and the regime. Skip Boyce visited for a second time on Aug. 2 and again, with Clapp, spoke to both sides engaged in the talks. There is now speculation that Secretary of State Colin Powell may visit Yangon soon -- perhaps as a side trip from the Shanghai APEC Summit in November (Powell spoke with top regime officials when he attended the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting in Hanoi in late July).
The British, for their part, have moved as much as the Americans. Aside from dumping the former foreign secretary Robin Cook and his much-maligned "ethical foreign policy," Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has quietly begun to propound a pro-engagement line and has now publicly stated that a carrot is being offered in the form of substantive and specifically defined aid, social assistance, language training and other measures if there is progress in the talks. On July 25, Blair's top foreign policy adviser in the cabinet office, Robert Cooper, head of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office's East Asia Command, flew to Yangon for talks with Kyaw Win and Suu Kyi.
As one observer in Yangon said: "A man of Cooper's stature does not fly all the way out here to check on the weather. The British know there is movement in the talks and they don't want to be caught off guard when a settlement is announced." Cooper was gratified at the ready access he was granted to Suu Kyi, whom he has known since the late 1960s when he was a junior diplomat at the British mission in New York and she worked at the U.N. headquarters, living with a longtime friend of her father's family, the former singer Dora Than-E.
Aside from the U.K. and U.S., other Western governments and organizations have begun to discreetly change their stance on Myanmar. The Brussels-based International Crisis Group, headed by the former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans (who was so instrumental in bringing a political settlement to Cambodia), is now taking a strong pro-engagement line and is critical of the sanctions policies of the West. As well, in an astonishing unilateral act that flew in the face of many Western governments (and of Suu Kyi, to a certain extent), the heads of nine United Nations organizations based in Yangon signed a June 30 appeal for increased humanitarian aid to Myanmar. The U.N. reps pointed out the grotesque inequity of the situation whereby Myanmar receives only $1 per capita annually compared to $68 for Laos, which has an even more despotic regime.
Clearly this situation is going to change in tandem with the progress made in the talks. Already some aid bodies are taking the lead - the International Organization for Migration said in July that it will set up a field presence in Myanmar. It will be needed -- particularly in light of changing Thai policies. The new Thaksin Shinawatra government in Bangkok, which is adopting a robust, commerce-driven engagement initiative with Yangon, has made it clear that refugees on its side of the border will have to return to Myanmar. They can go voluntarily or they will be moved back. This month, Thailand's National Security Council secretary-general Khajadpai Buruspatana said bluntly : "Our policy is to close the camps and send the refugees back home."
We must also factor in visits to Yangon by senior East Asian officials to update themselves on the talks. Recently, top Japanese foreign ministry officials, including Kunihiko Makita, the director-general of the ministry's Bureau of Asia & Oceania, and Taeko Takahashi, head of the Southeast Asia desk, met both sides in the dialogue. Others nipping in to check on what's happening have included Hisashi Owada of Japan's Institute of International Affairs, and Tomomitsu Iwakura, senior adviser of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Right now, is there on his fifth trip, this one a 4-day visit to ginger the talks along.
Soon after, the International Labor Organization will send in a team which will have unprecedented permission to travel the country and assess whether forced labor has really been eradicated as the regime contends.
As well, a European Union delegation will revisit, as will the U.N. Human Rights Rapporteur, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. After his first visit in April, Pinheiro said:"There are several signs that indicated evolution leading to an eventual political opening." Those signs are even more manifest today - and, as the flurry of visits indicates, they are growing stronger by the day. That is why Banpu's Chanin and other business leaders in the region are already starting to look at Myanmar for possible investment.
Well, that'll do for now. In the second part to follow soon, I'll let you know exactly why all these people are changing their tack and flying into Yangon to find out what's happening. In other words, I'll tell you what the talks are all about and when we can expect an accord to be signed. And remember, when it is announced, when the rest of the world's press report that it is a surprise -- you will be able to say, Hey, no, it's not a surprise at all. I read about it in detail in Asiaweek long ago. When I wrote on May 31 that by the end of this year "a settlement will have been reached between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi," the cynical response from the former British ambassador to Thailand, Derek Tonkin, was: "Oh, yeah?" I have one word for Mr. Tonkin: "Yeah."