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Southeast Asian lawmakers have urged the United Nations to launch a new initiative to unite the European Union, the United States, China and other key nations behind a programme leading to democracy in military-ruled Myanmar.
Myanmar's government has become even more hard-line under junta chairman Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who ousted former prime minister Gen. Khin Nyunt last October, the lawmakers said on October 10. They saw no hope of any real democratic reforms without concerted international political pressure.
While many countries find the current situation unacceptable, the lawmakers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Inter-Parliamentary Caucus on Democracy in Myanmar said there is no agreement or coordination among key nations on how to move forward.
The ASEAN parliamentarians called on Secretary-General Kofi Annan or the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France -- to take the initiative to get the major countries with a stake in Myanmar to agree on steps to achieve democracy.
"We feel that the military generals in Myanmar will not change, will not accommodate the expectations of the people of Burma for more representative government, for more democracy, for a better economy, for stability because ... in spite of all their promises they have not done anything in a tangible way to show that they are serious about accommodating these expectations," said Malaysian lawmaker Zaid Ibrahim, the caucus chairman.
Thai Senator Jon Ungphakorn said the caucus would like to see the European Union, the United States, Canada, ASEAN, China, Japan, India and Russia agree on "joint efforts to put pressure on the regime in Burma to at least come up with minimum standards of democratic reforms which would include the release of political prisoners (and) dialogue with the various parties concerned."
""There is no apparent progress toward democracy, no apparent move to release (pro-democracy leader) Aung San Suu Kyi," Ungphakorn told a news conference. "There are reports of widespread rape by Burmese soldiers against various ethnic peoples."
Suu Kyi has spent more than half of the past 16 years in detention, and her current time under house arrest began in May 2003. More than 1,000 political prisoners are also believed to be jailed in Myanmar.
The junta says it is drafting a new constitution leading to democratic elections. It last held elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi's party won.
Efforts to reach Myanmar's U.N. Mission for comment later after the press conference by the South Asian lawmakers, were unsuccessful.
Ibrahim said key nations should set minimum conditions including, for instance, what kind of democracy the country should have, the role of the military, and whether a new constitution should include rights for ethnic groups and political parties including Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
"Once you have specific criteria agreed upon," he said, "then you have someone who will negotiate with them. ... Otherwise, the regime will not budge."
Ibrahim said nothing should be excluded to achieve results, including sanctions, though he said the caucus did not envision military action.
The 10 ASEAN nations typically follow a policy of noninterference in each other's domestic affairs and resistance to foreign pressure.
But Singapore lawmaker Ramasamu Ravindran said getting Myanmar to give up the the 2006 chair of ASEAN showed "a sea change in terms of attitude within ASEAN countries" that they were no longer willing to tolerate the status quo and want to see a real transition toward democracy.
Ibrahim said ASEAN is too small and divided to take the lead on a Myanmar initiative. The Myanmar caucus is only a year old and includes about 120 lawmakers from Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia.
"The big players who've got a stake, who want to see change in Burma, they must be involved," Ibrahim said.
The caucus would "like to see Europe and America engage with China to find a solution to this, in a way that they did with North Korea," Ibrahim said, referring to the six-party talks on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme that recently produced a breakthrough.
But the United Nations - the secretary-general or the permanent Security Council members - should take the initiative because Myanmar's government has refused to allow U.N. envoy Razali Ismail of Malaysia and U.N. human rights experts to visit the country, he said.
"So I think it's incumbent on the U.N. to say, OK, we're going to find a solution to this," Ibrahim said.
The delegation from the caucus has already met EU officials in Brussels and is scheduled to hold talks with U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari and Security Council members before heading to Washington.
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