Than Shwe Has No Time for UN Envoy

By WAI MOE

United Nations Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari has ended yet another visit to Burma without meeting the ruling regime’s supreme leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe. As if to underline this snub, the state-run media reported on Than Shwe’s more important business on the final day of Gambari’s four-day visit—accepting the credentials of new ambassadors from the friendly governments of China, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Analysts say that the Burmese authorities intentionally put Than Shwe on the front page of today’s New Light of Myanmar to highlight how little he thinks of Gambari’s UN-mandated mission to put the country on a path to political reconciliation with the democratic opposition.

“This seems to be Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s way of sending a clear message about who he wants to meet and who he doesn’t want to meet,” said Win Min, a Burmese political analyst based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “He clearly doesn’t want to meet Mr Gambari.”

The highest-ranking general to meet with Gambari, who finished his seventh trip to Burma on Tuesday, was Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein. The state-run media also covered Gambari’s meeting with Thein Sein, as well as his two meetings with members of the junta’s Spokes Authoritative Team, led by Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan.

While Than Shwe made his feelings known more obliquely, Thein Sein was more direct. According to the New Light, he told the visiting envoy, “The UN should make efforts to lift economic sanctions imposed on Myanmar [Burma] if the organization wants to see prosperous Myanmar with political stability.”

He said that the economic sanctions have hindered the regime’s efforts to alleviate poverty. He described the country’s situation as being “like a person who is forced to run quickly while his legs are tied together.”

The Burmese regime is the target of numerous international sanctions for its widespread human rights abuses and its refusal to loosen its grip on power. Following the junta’s brutal crackdown on monk-led protests in September 2007, the US and other Western countries moved to increase pressure on the regime with visa bans and targeted sanctions against high-ranking Burmese officials and their families and business cronies.

The regime also blamed its most outspoken domestic critic, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, for the slow pace of its efforts to achieve “national reconsolidation” (a term that it frequently uses as a substitute for “national reconciliation”).

“Concerning the matter of holding a dialogue between the government and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi we, on our part, would like to reiterate that we always keep the door open to her,” Kyaw Hsan, the information minister, told Gambari. He added: “After your last visit, for two times, we proposed her to hold a dialogue. But she declined our proposal.”

The New Light also quoted Kyaw Hsan as saying that Than Shwe would personally meet with Suu Kyi if she ended “her policy of Confrontation, Utter Devastation, and Imposing All Kinds of Sanctions including Economic Sanctions.”

However, Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), rejected the junta’s demands for unilateral concessions.

“If the regime wants to know Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s exact position on dialogue, she should be allowed to announce her statement publicly,” said NLD spokesman Nyan Win.

During her meeting with NLD executive members on Monday, Suu Kyi reiterated that “she was ready and willing to meet anyone” to achieve political reform, according to Nyan Win. But, he added, she “could not accept having meetings without achieving any outcome.”

He also said that Suu Kyi had told the Special Branch of Burma’s national police force that she would accept an invitation to meet with Aung Kyi, the regime’s liaison minister, after receiving treatment from her doctor.

Gambari is scheduled to brief UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on his Burma trip in India on Thursday, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters on Tuesday.

“[W]hat we are waiting for next is for Mr Gambari to brief the secretary-general on the outcome of his total visit on Thursday,” Okabe said.