Burma-US meeting held in New York
U.S. Engagement Must Understand Burma’s Diversity
Kathleen Parker: Obama talks a good game, but bullies don’t listen
Elder of Burmese Opposition Grapples With Election Dissonance
US-Myanmar meet in NY
Don’t lift Myanmar sanctions
Sanctions against Burma not working, author says
Talks and sanctions
Now is the time to act together to save ourselves
Myanmar-China border peaceful, says envoy
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009 07:05 UK
Burma-US meeting held in New York

A senior US diplomatic official has reportedly met with a delegation from Burma on the margins of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

Kurt Campbell, assistant US secretary of state for Asia, is thought to have met Burma’s science minister U Thaung.

Meanwhile US Senator Mitch McConnell restated Washington’s demand that Burma must release its political prisoners and hold fair elections.

He added that sanctions against the Burmese junta must stay.

His comments came after Burma’s prime minister, General Thein Sein, demanded an end to economic sanctions in an address to the UN General Assembly.

Sanctions

“Sanctions are being employed as a political tool against [Burma] and we consider them unjust,” said Thein Sein, the highest-ranking Burmese official to address the General Assembly in 14 years.

“Such acts must be stopped,” he said.

The United States cannot “even consider” easing sanctions until the military-led country has freed all political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

“The United States must also insist that Burma comply with its international obligations and end any prohibited military or proliferation-related co-operation with North Korea,” he said.

Indonesia, a leading member of the Association of South East Asian Nations which includes Burma, has hailed the United States’ decision to engage with Burma.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda called on the Burmese generals to respond positively to the US offer, perhaps by cutting back the time in which Aung San Suu Kyi is detained.

Burma plans to hold its first election in two decades next year, but few observers believe the process will be free or fair. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8281970.stm
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U.S. Engagement Must Understand Burma’s Diversity
Wed, 2009-09-30 12:16 — editor
By Nehginpao Kipgen

Developments are indicating that the Obama administration is starting to ease tension with the Burmese military junta. At the U.N. headquarters in New York on September 23, Hillary Clinton said the U.S. will be “moving in a direction of both engagement and continued sanctions.” Clinton is reiterating the comment she made earlier this year during her maiden visit to Asia as Secretary of State.

The announcement comes at a time when the world awaits what the U.S. government’s policy review on Burma might be. The outcome of the 9-month long policy review is something not unexpected. The Obama administration understands the ineffectiveness of either engagement or sanction by itself, without a coordinated international approach.

In another development, Burma’s foreign minister was allowed a 24-hour visit to Washington D.C. on the night of September 18. This visit happens after years of the U.S. sanctions since the late 1990s, under which the military generals were banned from traveling to the United States, except for international organizations’ meetings. Under the 2003 Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act, the White House needs to approve a waiver to allow Burmese officials attending the U.N. General Assembly to travel more than 25 miles out of New York.

Though Nyan Win did not meet with the Obama administration officials, he met with Burmese embassy staffs, U.S.-Asian Business Council and James Webb, a democrat senator from Virginia, who recently returned from a visit to Burma. Webb has been a vocal proponent of engagement.

In anticipation of a softer tone at the ongoing U.N. General Assembly and from the Obama administration, the Burmese military junta on September 17 released over 7,000 prisoners, which included about 100 political prisoners. Both the Burmese opposition and the U.N. Secretary General welcomed the news.

While the U.S. is starting to engage Burma, it must understand the ethnic diversity of this Southeast Asian nation. What is today called Burma/ Myanmar came into being at the 1947 Panglong agreement. In fact, the correct name of the country should be called ‘Union of Burma’ and not just Burma. The military junta changed from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, and as a result, it becomes ‘Union of Myanmar’.

Primarily based on dialectical variations, the military junta identifies “135 races” in the Union of Burma. In fact, the peoples of Burma were under two separate British administrations before it gained independence in 1948: ‘Burma proper’ and ‘Frontier Areas’. The Burma proper was predominantly occupied by ethnic Burmans, while Frontier Areas belonged to other ethnic nationalities, which are now identified as ‘ethnic minorities’.

The Union of Burma has the longest armed insurgency in the entire Southeast Asian region. While the military has persuaded more than a dozen armed groups to sign ceasefire agreements, there are still armed groups operating along the Indo-Burma and Thai-Burma borders.

These armed groups are neither terrorists nor separatists. They are demanding autonomy under a federal government, a foundation in which the Union of Burma was established in 1947. The conflicts in Burma are not only political, but also ethnical. Only restoring democracy is unlikely to restore the trust and confidence of the so-called “ethnic minorities.”

The U.S. government and the international community need to understand the complexity nature of the conflicts. Though the Burmese military junta has the power to suppress ethnic armed insurgents, given the strength of over 400,000 armies without any foreign enemy, the aspirations of ethnic minorities cannot simply be suppressed by force. The root cause of the conflicts needs to be addressed.

There are two different stages in the ongoing democratic struggle in Burma. While majority of the ethnic Burmans may suffice with the restoration of a democratic government, the overwhelming ethnic minority population, which constitutes a little less than 40% of the country’s total population but occupies more than two-thirds of the land, will continue to demand for their fundamental political rights.

In order to find a way out for Burma, the Obama administration is doing the right thing by applying both engagement and sanction tools. The administration needs to continue to put pressure on the military junta to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the 1991 Nobel peace laureate. Sanctions should not be unconditionally lifted before any tangible changes are happening inside the country.

The new policy will provide a platform for the U.S. government to have access to both the engagement and isolation groups. With the engagement agenda, the Obama administration can now work with members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, India, and Russia. With the continued sanction policy, the administration can still work together with the European Union, its traditional ally.

While the policy shift is a welcome move, the Obama administration needs to understand the root cause of conflicts in Burma. The U.S. engagement should not be just with the military junta and the NLD, but inclusive. The plights and aspirations of ethnic minorities should always be part of the solutions.

Nehginpao Kipgen is a researcher on the rise of political conflicts in modern Burma (1947-2004) and general secretary of the U.S.-based Kuki International Forum ( www.kukiforum.com). He has written numerous analytical articles on the politics of Burma and Asia for many leading international newspapers.

- Asian Tribune - http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/09/30/us-engagement-must-understand-burma%E2%80%99s-diversity
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Kathleen Parker: Obama talks a good game, but bullies don’t listen
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THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Sep 30, 2009 @ 12:02 AM

WASHINGTON — In keeping with his campaign promise to talk to America’s enemies without precondition, Barack Obama plans to turn his charms on Burma’s military junta.

Slowly, we’re beginning to understand what hope and change were all about. Translation: Sure hope this change works.

It may be too soon to pass judgment on Obama’s new foreign policy strategy, but early returns on his gamble that talking is the best cure are less than reassuring. Each time Obama extends a hand to one of the world’s anti-American despots, he is rewarded with an insult (Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez) or, perhaps, a missile display (North Korea and Iran).

One may view these episodes as diminishing America’s status or as a tolerable annoyance — sort of the way Dobermans view toy poodles. At some point, the big dog reminds the little yapper of his place. Unfortunately, the American commander in chief is a cat in a dog-eat-dog world.

Obama inarguably was elected in part as a reaction to George W. Bush’s big-dawgness. A new American archetype, Obama is the anti-macho man, a new-age intellectual who defeated the old-guard warrior. Whether he can win with his wits in the larger theater remains to be seen, but watching could be painful.

The shift in policy toward Burma, for instance, was announced Monday following the annual theater of the absurd, aka the United Nations General Assembly. Obama spoke eloquently there about the need for cooperation as the world tackles global problems, hitting his familiar theme of responsibility. All countries — not just the U.S. — have a role to play in combating crises around the world, he told the happy gathering of superpowers, banana republics, dictatorships and terrorist states.

Perfectly timed for comedians with writer’s block, Obama was followed by Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, with whom Obama shook hands at a dinner in July. It isn’t helpful that Gaddafi looks like a renegade from Ringling Bros. Or that just weeks ago, he hosted a welcome-home celebration for the 1988 Lockerbie bomber-terrorist, who killed 270 people. But Gaddafi’s 96-minute diatribe — which included questioning the assassination of John F. Kennedy and expressing sympathy for the Taliban — was a prolonged assault on sane people everywhere.

In the midst of such charades, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emerging Dirty Harry persona is oddly reassuring. Often speaking through nearly clenched teeth, she has become Obama’s bad cop. On Burma, she has promised to remain tough and continue sanctions pending credible democratic reforms. But, she has added dutifully, sanctions alone haven’t gotten us very far.

Surely, talking is worth a shot. Or is it?

In the previous administration, the conventional wisdom was that talking to bad actors lent legitimacy where none was deserved. Bush, for instance, ignored Chavez, believing that acknowledgment was empowerment.

Chavez responded by referring to Bush as the devil no fewer than eight times during his 2006 U.N. address. This year, Chavez complimented but also chided Obama for saying one thing and doing another. There may be two Obamas, he said. And more than a few Americans thought he might have a point.

One Obama is loquacious and inspiring. The other seems somewhat removed from threatening realities and people who don’t share our appreciation for visionary rhetoric. Some folks simply aren’t talk-able.
Some nations — no matter how well-intentioned, sincere and earnest we are — just aren’t that into us.

Chavez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, brothers in their own declared “axis of unity,” are cases in point. United in their animus toward the U.S., they’ve become so close they’re practically exchanging jewelry.

Better than that, they’re building financial partnerships that may make sanctions irrelevant and, in a “Memorandum of Understanding,” have promised each other military support and cooperation.

While in New York last week, Chavez did a little PR work, appearing on “Larry King Live.” The former altar boy said he loves Jesus, Walt Whitman and Charles Bronson, and that he loves to sing. He isn’t power hungry, as some claim, nor is he mining uranium for Ahmadinejad, as suggested in a report last December by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He, alas, has been misunderstood.

And Iran? Just days before Obama and five other leaders are scheduled to meet in Geneva Oct. 1 to discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Islamic Republic test-fired long-range missiles.

In the new era of talk diplomacy, we might call that a pre-emptive strike — a nonverbal gesture worth a million moot words. Then again, there’s always hope.

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is kathleenparker@washpost.com.
http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x576528546/Kathleen-Parker-Obama-talks-a-good-game-but-bullies-don-t-listen
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Elder of Burmese Opposition Grapples With Election Dissonance
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: September 29, 2009

YANGON, Myanmar — U Win Tin, Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, was tormented, tortured and beaten by his captors in the notorious Insein Prison for nearly two decades. Now, at 80, he faces a new kind of torment: watching colleagues from his political party decide whether to play ball with the junta that put him behind bars.

Released in September 2008 after more than 19 years in prison, Mr. Win Tin remains remarkably spry, upbeat, and politically engaged. A co-founder of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, he is a vocal opponent of taking part in national elections set for next year. The vote, along with the implementation of a new constitution, would nominally return Myanmar to civilian government after four and a half decades of military rule.

But while the constitution, passed in a disputed referendum held amid the widespread devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, allows elected representation, it accords special powers to the military in what the junta calls “disciplined democracy.” Many critics call it a sham.

“The election can mean nothing as long as it activates the 2008 constitution, which is very undemocratic,” Mr. Win Tin said in a recent interview.

However, his party is split over whether to boycott the election. Some members say participating would mean losing moral claim to the party’s landslide victory in the 1990 general election, which was ignored by the junta. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent much of the period since under house arrest and was sentenced to a new term of 18 months in May, has not made her views on the issue public.

Still, the constitution offers some protections. In August, the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based nongovernmental organization that seeks to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts, issued a report recommending that opposition groups participate in the election. It said that, although the new constitution “entrenches military power,” the changes at least establish “shared political spaces — the legislatures and perhaps the cabinet — where co-operation could be fostered.”

And internationally, some policies toward Myanmar are shifting.

Last week, the Obama administration announced that it would engage the junta directly, while keeping sanctions in place. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for the unconditional release of political prisoners, including Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, and “credible, democratic reform.”

“If the direct engagement of the U.S. will result in the release of all political prisoners and in a revision of the 2008 Constitution, then dialogue could begin between us and the junta, and we would consider running in the election,” Mr. Win Tin said.

Mr. Win Tin — warm, razor-sharp and grittily determined — said the junta might have released him, shortly before his jail sentence was complete, in order to split the party. He admitted that “we are having some arguments about whether we are going to participate in the elections or not,” but insisted that there was “no conflict within the party now.”

Before being jailed for three years in 1989 after he became secretary of the then newly formed National League for Democracy, Mr. Win Tin had worked as a journalist. In 1991, he was given 10 more years for his involvement in popular uprisings in 1988 that were crushed by the military. In 1996, he was given seven more years for sending the United Nations a petition about abuses in Myanmar prisons. Much of the time, he was in solitary confinement.

“I could not bow down to them,” he said. “No, I could not do it. I wrote poems to keep myself from going crazy. I did mathematics with chalk on the floor.”

He added: “From time to time, they ask you to sign a statement that you are not going to do politics and that you will abide by the law and so on and so forth. I refused.”

When all his upper teeth were bashed out, he was 61. The guards refused to let him get dentures for eight years, leaving him to gum his food.

Early this month, Mr. Win Tin was briefly detained after he wrote an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post, criticizing the ruling military junta and its plans for the election next year.

“I think they are trying to intimidate me, to stop me from appearing in the foreign media,” he said.

During the interview, on his cousin’s leafy porch in suburban Yangon, government spies openly watched and took photographs from outside the gate.

Never married, Mr. Win Tin talks fondly of his adopted daughter, who lives in Sydney, Australia, after gaining political asylum 15 years ago. He has not seen her since.

Accustomed to a spare prison diet, he has one meal early in the day and a bit of fruit in the evening.

“I don’t want to be a burden on anyone,” he said.

Since his release, Mr. Win Tin has tried to reinvigorate the leadership of the National League for Democracy by stepping up the frequency of meetings and lobbying overseas governments. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi remains popular, despite the long years of detention, but the party has been crippled by the arrests of hundreds of the younger members, Mr. Win Tin said.

“We have some young men, but they are followed and sent to jail all the time,” he said. “Sometimes, they go to the pagoda just for praying. They are followed and charged with something and sentenced.” Many, he said, are tortured.

All but one of Mr. Win Tin’s eight colleagues on the party’s central executive committee are older than him. The committee president and chairman, U Aung Shwe, is 92, and so infirm that he has not visited party headquarters for months. The party secretary, U Lwin, 87, is bedridden and paralyzed. The youngster in the group, is U Khin Maung Swe, 64.

Despite the challenges his party faces, Mr. Win Tin remains upbeat.

“We expect democracy can happen anytime,” he said, recalling the country’s postcolonial democracy period between 1948 and 1962. “But sometimes, you have to sacrifice everything for a long, long time. It might extend for more than your life span.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/world/30myanmar.html?ref=world
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Sep 30, 2009
US-Myanmar meet in NY

WASHINGTON – THE United States and Myanmar plan to open a high-level dialogue on Tuesday at a meeting in New York, a source familiar with the matter said.

US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell plans to meet U Thaung, Myanmar’s minister of science, technology and labour, said the source, who spoke on condition that he not be identified because the meeting has yet to be made public.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week said that the United States would pursue deeper engagement with Myanmar’s military rulers to try to spur democratic reform but will not ease sanctions for now.

While acknowledging economic sanctions had failed to bring about change in Myanmar, Mrs Clinton said Washington had concluded in a policy review that it had to maintain them while enhancing its dialogue with the isolated Southeast Asian nation.

Myanmar plans next year to hold its first election in two decades, which the junta says will bring an end to almost five decades of unbroken military rule. Many analysts suspect the generals will still hold the real power.

Washington has gradually tightened sanctions on the generals who rule the country, formerly known as Burma, to try to force them into political rapprochement with Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. — REUTERS
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_436161.html
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Sep 30, 2009
Don’t lift Myanmar sanctions

WASHINGTON – THE United States cannot ‘even consider’ easing sanctions on Myanmar until the military-led country has freed all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, a top US Senator said on Tuesday.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also said that the punitive measures should remain in force unless Myanmar holds free and fair elections in 2010 that include opposition and ethnic groups.

‘There remain two significant tests of whether or not Burma’s relationship with the United States has improved to the degree that we should even consider moving away from a policy of sanctions,’ Mr McConnell said in a statement.

‘The United States must also insist that Burma comply with its international obligations and end any prohibited military or proliferation related cooperation with North Korea,’ said the senator.

His comments came as the US State Department said that, as part of a new policy of engagement, one of its top diplomats would meet on Tuesday with a delegation from Myanmar on the margins of the UN General Assembly.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said at a press briefing in Washington that Kurt Campbell, assistant US secretary of state for Asia, was to meet in New York today with a delegation headed by Myanmar’s science and technology minister U Thaung.

Myanmar’s representative to the United Nations, Than Swe, is also expected to participate.

The meeting comes after the United States announced Monday it was starting a dialogue with the military-led Myanmar, though it insisted it would keep sanctions in place until the regime makes progress on democracy.

On Monday, Campbell announced that President Barack Obama’s administration had decided to reengage Myanmar after years of stalemate proved unproductive. — AFP  http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/SE%2BAsia/Story/STIStory_436121.html
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Sanctions against Burma not working, author says

Burmese people need more, not less, North American presence, Karen Connelly says
Sep 29, 2009 06:50 PM
Olivia Ward
FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER

Two years after the “saffron revolution” that led to the arrest and torture of hundreds of Burmese demonstrators, the U.S. is planning deeper engagement with the pariah regime.

But the most important steps toward supporting Burma’s exhausted and traumatized people, says an award-winning writer on Burma, are burying the sanctions that have isolated the country and reviving investment and travel.

“Isolation is one of the main problems,” says Karen Connelly, Toronto-based author of Burmese Lessons: a Love Story, on her months in Burma and on the Thai-Burmese border.

“There should be no Western sanctions, because they are not working. The gap is just being filled by India, China and others who don’t care about sanctions.”

And she said, “what the people need is more, not less North American presence,” to overcome the sense of hopelessness that many Burmese are now feeling.

Washington is about to table a new strategy to increase aid for people living under one of the world’s worst authoritarian regimes, while keeping current sanctions in place.

But imprisoned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy was denied its victory in the 1990 election, last week wrote Burma’s military chief, Than Shwe, that she would work with him on getting the embargo lifted.

She welcomed the U.S. plans for more diplomatic engagement, but urged Washington to also talk to the Burmese opposition.

China has taken full advantage of the cold shoulder Burma has received from the West, said Connelly. “Markets are flooded with Chinese goods, and the Chinese population has increased. Most of Mandalay is owned by the Chinese.”

And, she added, there has been a stream of Chinese migrants who “buy” the identities of dead Burmese people and live in Burma under their names. But the changes have done little to improve the lot of the majority of Burmese.

Connelly, who won awards for her previous book The Lizard Cage — a novel about the horrific life of an imprisoned political dissident in one of Burma’s brutal jails — said that the junta has destroyed the lives of its 55 million people by imposing a “slave culture.”

While the ruling generals lead lives of luxury, ordinary people are malnourished, and suffer from constant electricity blackouts.

After a major student-led protest in 1988, the regime also began to dismantle higher education by closing the universities several times a year, withdrawing financial support, and planting spies to incriminate suspected government opponents.

“Medical courses are so truncated that one respected doctor stopped teaching because she had no faith that the students would be able to graduate as competent doctors,” Connelly said.

In spite of the poverty and repression, there is little effective armed resistance to the regime. Connelly’s new book documents her 1996 love affair with a leader of a small resistance group on the Thai-Burma border. But like many other militia members he later quit the armed struggle against the Burmese military, who regularly attack the ethnic minorities living along the border.

Some 3.5 million Burmese have been displaced by the low-level conflict, and many are living in misery along the border as refugees, as the fighting continues.

In August, Burma’s army attacked Kokang, on the border of southwestern China, reportedly looting ethnic Chinese businesses, and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee into China as refugees.  http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/702857
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Talks and sanctions
By The Statesman
New Delhi
Published on September 30, 2009

There appears to be a distinct change in the United States’ policy towards Burma, with Hillary Clinton declaring that talks with the junta would be “stepped up” in parallel with the sanctions.

This certainly is a forward progression not least because the imprisoned democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has lent support to the move. There may be hope yet that direct engagement with the rulers will provide the impetus for democratic reforms.

There is increasing realisation in the West that the sanctions regime hasn’t been effective against a ruthless junta that is even prepared to resist diplomatic isolation. There is acknowledgement too in certain quarters that the West’s hard line approach has been a disaster, with scarcely a change in the prolonged predicament of Suu Kyi.

Much will depend on the pace at which Burma names its interlocutor for the bilateral talks. The shift in the US style of engagement becomes clear from the secretary of state’s address at a meeting of the Friends of Burma in New York: “Any debate that pits sanctions against engagement creates a false choice. Going forward, we’ll need to employ both of these tools.”

She has taken care to couch her prescription with the caveat: “Lifting sanctions now would send the wrong signal … But we will be willing to discuss the easing of sanctions in response to significant actions that address the core human rights and democracy issues that are inhibiting Burma’s progress.”

For both sides, it will be a very delicate balance to sustain, given the country’s brutal record in stifling democracy. Yet it must be conceded that the gesture raises hope.

As much is clear from the immediate response of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy: “The new US approach will bring improved and more transparent relations.”

Suu Kyi herself has backed the move with the very reasonable suggestion that the US dealings ought to be conducted with both the junta and the pro-democracy leaders.

One need hardly add that only then will the Obama administration’s review of its policy towards Burma be meaningful.  http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/30113335/Talks-and-sanctions
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Now is the time to act together to save ourselves
By BAN KI-MOON
New York
Published on September 29, 2009

EVERY SEPTEMBER, the world’s leaders gather at the United Nations to reaffirm our founding Charter – our faith in fundamental principles of peace, justice, human rights and equal opportunity for all. We assess the state of the world, engage key issues of the day, and lay out our vision for the way ahead.

But this year is different. The 64th opening of the General Assembly asks us to rise to an exceptional moment. We are facing many crises – food, energy, recession, and pandemic flu – occurring all at once. If ever there were a time to act in a spirit of renewed multilateralism, a time to put the “united” back into the United Nations, it is now.

And that is what we are doing, as action on three issues of historic consequence demonstrate.

First, world leaders are uniting to address the greatest challenge we face as a human family – the threat of catastrophic climate change. Last week, 101 leaders from 163 countries met to chart the next steps toward December’s all-important UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. They recognised the need for an agreement that all nations can embrace – in line with their capabilities, consistent with what science requires, and grounded in “green jobs” and “green growth”, the lifeline of a 21st-century global economy.

We at the UN have prepared carefully for this moment. For two and a half years, ever since I became secretary-general, we have worked to put climate change at the top of the global agenda. Today, we have entered a new phase. Last week’s summit sharply defined the issue and focused attention in capitals the world over. To be sure, the issues are complex and difficult, especially those of financing adaptation and mitigation efforts in poorer countries. Yet leaders left New York committed to clear and firm instructions for their negotiators: Seal a deal in Copenhagen.

Japan issued a challenge, agreeing to cut CO2 emissions by 25 per cent by 2020 if other nations follow. China’s President Hu Jintao spoke about all that his country is already doing to reduce energy intensity and invest in “green” alternatives. He emphasised that China is prepared to do more under an international agreement, as did US President Barack Obama.

Negotiators will gather for another round of UN talks on September 28 in Bangkok, and we are considering a smaller meeting of major emitting and most vulnerable nations in November. We need a breakthrough in this make-or-break year.

We saw another turning point on a second issue of existential importance: Nuclear disarmament. Finally, the assumption that such weapons are needed to keep the peace is crumbling. At a special summit called by President Obama, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that opens a new chapter in the UN’s efforts to address nuclear proliferation and disarmament.

That resolution improves prospects for expanding the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty next May, and offers hope for bringing the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty into force. It also establishes the contours of a legal framework for action against misuse of civilian nuclear technology for military purposes and reflects an emerging consensus, seen in meeting after meeting, that the time has come to increase pressure on countries that fail to respect these principles.

The world is united on a third front, as well. Though some may speak of “turning the corner to recovery”, we see a new crisis emerging. According to our recent report, “Voices of the Vulnerable”, the near-poor are becoming the new poor.

An estimated 100 million people could fall below the poverty line this year. Markets may be bouncing back, but jobs and incomes are not. That is why, earlier this year, the UN put forward a Global Jobs Pact for balanced and sustainable growth. It is also why we are creating a new Global Impact Vulnerability Alert System, giving us real-time data and analysis on socio-economic conditions around the world. We need to know precisely who is being hurt by the financial crisis, and where, so that we can best respond.

That is also why, next year at this time, we will convene a special summit on the Millennium Development Goals. We have only five years to meet the targets for health, education and human security that we set for 2015. At the various G-20 summits over the past year, including the latest in Pittsburgh, the UN has stood firm to speak and act for all those being left behind.

Rhetoric has always been abundant at the General Assembly, action sometimes less so. Yet listening to the world’s leaders speak last week, I was struck by their passion, commitment and collective determination to turn a page from a past of countries divided by narrow interests to nations united in the cause of a global common good.

From confronting climate change to creating a world without nuclear weapons to building a more equitable and sustainable global economy, I saw a sprit of renewed multilateralism, with the UN at the fore. No country can deal with any of these challenges by itself. But as nations united, the United Nations can.

Ban Ki-Moon is the secretary-general of the United Nations  http://www.nationmultimedia.com/worldhotnews/30113244/Now-is-the-time-to-act-together-to-save-ourselves
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Myanmar-China border peaceful, says envoy
Web posted at: 9/30/2009 1:8:44
Source ::: REUTERS

BEIJING: Peace has now more or less returned to a part of Myanmar which erupted in violence last month, pushing thousands of refugees into China, the country’s ambassador to Beijing was quoted as saying yesterday.

In August, Myanmar’s army overran Kokang, a territory that lies along the border with the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan and was controlled for years by an ethnic Chinese militia that paid little heed to the central government.

Many of the refugees were ethnic Chinese, some of whom were Chinese citizens, and complained their houses and businesses had been sacked and looted during the violence. China had rapped the former Burma over the violence, demanding the government protect Chinese citizens and make sure such an incident did not happen again.

Myanmar’s ambassador to China, Thein Lwin, told the official China News Service that Kokang was now peaceful again, and that he had “sympathy” for residents’ losses caused by the clashes. He said he was “deeply grieved” at the death of two Chinese during the unrest.

“At present, Kokang has basically returned to normal, and all legal Chinese enterprises have already reopened,” he said.“The Myanmar embassy in China has kept in close touch and cooperated with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, and have worked hard together to make sure this incident was solved in the most appropriate way.”