Ramos-Horta Urges Obama to Ease Stance on Burma

By THE IRRAWADDY

East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta has called on the United States to use the “international goodwill” generated by Barack Obama’s historic presidency to help end Burma’s political crisis.

Speaking in Washington on Wednesday, Ramos-Horta said that the decades-long impasse in Burma would be “one of the easiest” in the world to resolve if the US ended its policy of isolating the ruling regime.

“I know that the junta in Burma is desperate for changes and this is a unique opportunity for the US to engage them,” he said.

Ramos-Horta, who has been meeting with senior US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, since addressing the UN Security Council in New York on February 19, has long been an outspoken critic of Western sanctions on Burma.

In an interview with The Irrawaddy in February 2004, the Nobel Peace Prize winner described sanctions as “the moral equivalent of waging a war.”

“The difference is only that a war kills people immediately. Economic and financial sanctions often cause death, but it is invisible because it happens more slowly,” he said.

His latest statement echoed this sentiment.

“When you look at the situation in Myanmar [Burma] or Cuba, when you punish a country for the perceived sin of the regime, the consequence is that you also have collateral damage among the people,” he said on Wednesday.

Washington has indicated that it is looking at other ways to promote political reform in Burma. It remains unclear, however, if this means that it will ease sanctions on the junta for its human rights abuses and persecution of the country’s democratic opposition.

During a recent tour of Asia, Clinton said that the US was “looking at steps that might influence the current Burmese government, and we’re also looking for ways that we could more effectively help the Burmese people.”

But on the same day that Ramos-Horta made his comments in Washington, the US State Department released a report saying the junta was “brutally” suppressing its people.