Daily Press Briefing from STATE DEPARTMENT U.S. GOVERNMENT
Tom Casey, Deputy Spokesman
Washington, DC
January 24, 2008

Joint Statement from U.S., UK, and France _ “Davos was Good Opportunity to Pressure Burmese Regime”

 QUESTION: Can you discuss the origin of the Burma statement that we just received from Davos? Whose idea was it? What do you hope to – I mean, the economic forum doesn’t have much to do with Burma, so what are you trying to achieve there?

MR. CASEY: Well, first of all, I do hope that you’ve all seen it now. We did put out a little earlier this morning a joint statement by Secretary Rice and the UK and French Foreign Ministers on Burma. This was something that came about as a result of discussions among the three of them over time. Certainly, as you know, this is an issue that we have paid a great deal of attention to. And in general, I think you can say that the decision was made among the three of them that they thought the fact that they all were, at various points in time here, at Davos and that so much of senior policymakers’, business leaders’ and others’ attention is focused there that this would be a good opportunity to remind people of the importance we place on this issue and also to encourage them to continue to take actions to press the Burmese regime to do what we all want to see happen, which is a release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, the entry by the government, by the regime into a real and honest dialogue over the future of the country, as well as taking some of the other steps that we’ve talked about.

So it was an opportunity when there was a critical mass, if you will, of world leaders and influential people together in one place to simply remind them of our united position on this and to hope to encourage additional pressure to be placed on the regime to change their behavior.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. CASEY: Okay. Thank you, guys.

(The briefing was concluded at 1:07 p.m.)

DPB # 16