Asean Must Do More on Burma: Rice

By LALIT K JHA / WASHINGTON

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday said the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) should do more to help move Burma’s military dictatorship toward democracy.

"The democracies in places like Asean have to do more on Burma," Rice said in Washington in a speech delivered before a State Department advisory committee on the promotion of democracy.

Her remarks were one of the rare times a top US official has directly criticized the way Asean-member countries have handled the issue of Burma when it comes to promoting restoration of democracy and protection of human rights.

Pro-democracy advocates say Asean is in a position to do more for the people of Burma to help in reaching the objectives set by the international community—restoration of a true democracy in a peaceful transition.

Critics of Asean say several members of the regional grouping take the side of the military junta and are instrumental in supporting the regime.

In her speech, Rice said the task of promoting democracy in the world is not that of the US alone, and it should be shared by other responsible countries as well.

"Democracy promotion has got to be more than an American—an American task. The rest of the world, the EU, has got to do more on this, particularly in places like Cuba," she said.

"That's something that we're continuing to press for. A breath of fresh air in NATO and in the European Union has been the former captive nations, which take it as a part of their agenda to do democracy promotion," Rice said.

"So I think the next big frontier is to get more international support for this agenda. And it was a good thing that the UN did a Democracy Fund. That's a very good thing," she said.

In her speech, Rice identified Burma as one of the few countries in the world where the government does not welcome US ideas.

"You have other countries, such as, obviously, countries with which we have very bad relations—Burma or Cuba, Iran, even increasingly Russia—where the governments are not welcoming to what we do and you operate under a lot of constraints," Rice said.