Irrawaddy Farmers Still Short of Buffaloes, Oxen
Key Republicans Oppose Engagement with Burma
Burmese Activist Awaits Ruling on Asean Meeting
Dialogue is the key, say India, China, Russia
US warns of ’slow’ engagement with Myanmar, to send envoy in rare visit
US Burma trip begins long process
Myanmar PM leaves for 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand
Asean and human rights: closing the implementation gap
EU launches Burma aid fund
US to send rare mission to Burma
Mobile phones allowed in Myanmar’s capital
Myanmar booth highlights Muse border town in China-ASEAN trade fair
Bangladesh and Burma hold talks on border
Money for rights at the ASEAN summit
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rrawaddy Farmers Still Short of Buffaloes, Oxen
By SOE LWIN     Thursday, October 22, 2009

RANGOON — Nearly 18 months after Cyclone Nargis, farmers in the devastated Irrawaddy delta are still in great need of buffaloes and oxen to help them till their rice paddies.

The cyclone in May 2008 killed large numbers of draught animals, depriving farmers of an essential means of reestablishing their shattered livelihoods.
A farmer carries rice seedlings to plant in rain-fed rice field in August, in Dalla, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) south of Rangoon. (Photo: AP)

“Farmers are still in need of many more draught animals,” said an official from the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). “So far, what we’ve provided is just 2-3 percent of the total loss of draught animals.”

According to the government’s figures, nearly 300,000 buffaloes and cattle, or 50 percent of the total number of draught animals in the storm-hit area, were lost in Cyclone Nargis.

The category 4 storm that struck Rangoon and the Irrawaddy delta left nearly 140,000 people dead and disrupted the lives of more than 2 million.

International agencies and the Burmese government have responded to the need for draught animals by also providing mechanical tillers, but most farmers prefer buffaloes and oxen to work their fields.

In an effort to provide more buffaloes, the government established two breeding centers six months ago in Labutta Township, one of the hardest-hit areas. Each center is expected to produce 500 buffaloes a year.

It will take two years before the centers are able to provide adult buffaloes for working the rice paddies, according to an official from the Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department.

“These centers will not be able to solve immediate needs,” the official said, “But, they will be valuable in the long run.”

Many agriculturalists say most farmers are more accustomed to working with draught animals than with mechanical equipment, and for this reason preference should be given to providing them with buffaloes and oxen. Draught animals are also used for local transport and play an important role in village economies.

“Draught animals are also one of the sources of household income,” said an official from the Myanmar (Burma) Livestock Federation.

The animals have a cash value and cost far less to employ in the fields and to maintain than mechanical equipment

“While the cost of using draught animals is very low, mechanical tillers require fuel and regular maintenance,” said an official from the international aid organization ACTED.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17039
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Burmese Activist Awaits Ruling on Asean Meeting
By WAI MOE      Thursday, October 22, 2009

CHA-AM, Thailand—Burmese activist in exile, Khin Ohmar, who is due to represent Burmese civic groups at a meeting with heads of state at the 15th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (Asean) in Thailand on Friday, is waiting to hear if she has been accepted to participate.

Known as a tireless campaigner for human rights, Khin Ohmar is the chairperson of the Network for Democracy and Development (Burma), the vice-chair of Burmese Women’s Union and a policy forum member of the Forum for Democracy in Burma—an umbrella organization of Burmese political groups in exile.
A Thai soldier stands guard under the flags of the Asean summit meeting participants in the southern Thai resort town of Hua Hin. (Photo: Getty Images)

She is a also a founding member of the Women’s League of Burma and served as the women’s affairs coordinator for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma.

Khin Ohmar took part in Civil Society Organization (CSO) meetings on Oct.18-20 at the Asean People’s Forum in Cha-am in central Thailand. However, a draft of her speech for Fridays’ meeting was rejected by the Burmese military government, and she now awaits a ruling by the Thai foreign ministry.

“We are waiting to know the result of the Asean officials, particularly the host Thailand,” Burmese civic activist Thwin Lin Aung said. “Last time [14th Asean Summit], Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs barred her from the CSOs’ meeting with heads of state.”

During the 14th Asean Summit in February in Cha-am, Khin Ohmar and a Cambodian activist were denied participation at a civic forum with Asean leaders when Burmese Prime Minister Gen Thein Sein and Cambodia’s Hun Sen threatened to boycott the meeting with the civil society group if the two activists were allowed to take part.

The 15th Asean Summit is, however, an important event in the Asean’s history. Southeast Asian heads of state are due to adopt a declaration on human rights in the coming days.

However, many civil society groups in the region expect that the development of Asean’s human rights charter will be a gradual process. Many journalists at the summit remain skeptical about the Asean Human Rights Body and have highlighted the poor human rights record of countries in the region.

The Burmese military junta chose its loyal Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) to represent Burma at the civic forum. The USDA is accused by human rights groups of brutal attacks on opposition members and activists in Burma, not least of all an attack on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy in Depayin in upper Burma in May 2003 and on monk-led demonstrations in Sept. 2007.

“Although the Burmese junta endorsed the USDA as the Burmese civil society group, the Asean People’s Forum selected Khin Ohmar as the Burmese CSO representative,” Thwin Lin Aung said.

Apart from an informal meeting between Asean leaders and representatives of CSOs from the region, Burmese groups will meet with Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Friday.

“A Thai civic group arranged for Mr Abhisit to hold a separate meeting with Burmese CSO representatives both from border-based groups and government-sponsored representatives from the USDA,” Thwin Lin Aung said. “Ma Khin Ohmar and a Buddhist monk will be at the meeting on behalf of the border-based Burmese CSOs.”

Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein arrived in Cha-am on Thursday to attend the 15th Asean Summit. He is accompanied by Foreign Minister Nyan Win and Soe Tha, the minister of National Planning and Economic Development.

If Khin Ohn Mar is approved for the meeting on Friday, she will be the first Burmese pro-democracy activist to sit face-to-face with a ruling general at an important international event.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/highlight.php?art_id=17044
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Dialogue is the key, say India, China, Russia
Amit Baruah , Hindustan Times
Email Author
Harbin (China), October 24, 2007
First Published: 18:26 IST(24/10/2007)
Last Updated: 03:12 IST(25/10/2007)

India, China and Russia have opposed fresh western sanctions on Myanmar, but supported efforts by the UN for dialogue with the junta in troubled nation.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said “political reforms and national reconciliation” should be expedited and must involve “all stakeholders” in Myanmar.

Addressing a joint news conference after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, Mukherjee said Myanmarese authorities should be “encouraged to engage in dialogue” and efforts being made by UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari should be taken to their “logical conclusion”. “There should not be any sanctions at this stage,” Mukherjee said.

Jiechi said the situation in Myanmar was “calming down” and ultimately, the issue had to be resolved by the Myanmar government and its people. “The countries concerned (a reference to the US and other western powers) should play a helping role rather than applying sanctions,” he added.

Lavrov said more sanctions would only aggravate the situation in Myanmar. On terrorism, the three ministers stressed on “zero tolerance”. Mukherjee added that the Taliban should not be “allowed to take charge of the area in any circumstances”. The three reiterated that their cooperation was not directed against “any other country or organisation”. Lavrov also clarified that they were not setting up any military alliance.

Mukherjee said there was “no question” of India participating in US’s plans to set up a missile defence system. He added that the matter did not come up for discussion at the third trilateral on Wednesday. The foreign ministers agreed to set up a “consultation mechanism” at an official level for regional and international issues. They sought cooperation at the economic level.  http://www.hindustantimes.com/special-news-report/world-news/Dialogue-is-the-key-India-China-Russia/Article1-253968.aspx
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US warns of ’slow’ engagement with Myanmar, to send envoy in rare visit
AFP 22 October 2009, 05:31pm IST

WASHINGTON: The United States is preparing to send a rare mission to Myanmar but warns that its bid to engage the military junta after decades of
hostility will be “slow and painful.”

Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said a team would head to Myanmar to follow up on talks last month in New York, which marked the highest-level US contact with the regime in nearly a decade.

But in testimony on Wednesday before a House of Representatives committee, Campbell cautioned: “We expect engagement with Burma (Myanmar) to be a long, slow, painful and step-by-step process.”

A Myanmar official on Thursday confirmed the “fact-finding” trip would take place next week. But the official gave no further details, saying the visit was still in the planning stages.

Campbell did not specify who would take part in the trip. Another senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Campbell hoped to go himself but it would depend on whether the junta gives him access to the opposition.

The National League for Democracy, the party of detained opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi, welcomed the planned visit as a “good thing.”

“They will also meet the NLD when they come,” party spokesman Nyan Win told AFP. “We welcome their visit. We are also hoping that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be allowed to meet Mr Campbell.”

President Barack Obama’s administration last month concluded that the longstanding US approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit but said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.

In August, Myanmar’s military leader Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with a visiting US senator, Jim Webb, a leading advocate of engaging the junta. Webb also met with Suu Kyi.

A State Department official, Stephen Blake, quietly visited Myanmar in March to hold talks with both the junta and the opposition. It was the first trip by a US envoy to the country in more than seven years.

Campbell told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the dialogue would “supplement rather than replace” the sanctions regime.

“We will not judge the success of our effort at pragmatic engagement by the results of a handful of meetings. Engagement for its own sake is obviously not a goal for US policy,” he said.

Campbell said that one goal was simply to gain a better understanding of the junta, which he described as “a group of men that have self-isolated themselves.”

“In my particular area, the country that we know the least about at a fundamental level, even less than North Korea, is Burma,” said the top US diplomat for Asia.

Democratic Representative Joseph Crowley, one of Suu Kyi’s top champions in Congress, said he backed the new strategy in part because the Nobel laureate has indicated her support.

But Crowley warned: “It is a real possibility that the military regime will try and use ongoing talks to buy time, in order to proceed with a sham election they have scheduled for next year.”

The NLD plans to shun the elections, the first since a 1990 vote that the party won in a landslide. The junta ignored that result, and has kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for much of the past 20 years.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican, was one of the few to reject the US outreach altogether, questioning whether the Obama administration needs to learn more about the junta.

“With all due respect, we know all about Burma. It’s not an unknown quantity. It has a vicious gangster regime, one of the most despicable regimes in this planet,” he said.

“We are saying that they are a legitimate government to sit down with. They are not.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-warns-of-slow-engagement-with-Myanmar-to-send-envoy-in-rare-visit/articleshow/5149393.cms
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Thursday, 22 October 2009 05:35 UK
US Burma trip begins long process

Burmese senior general Than Shwe (centre) with other junta leaders at Nya Pyi Taw airport – 2 October 2009
Burma has been ruled by its military since 1962

A senior American diplomat has said the US will send what he described as a fact-finding mission to Burma soon.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, said the trip would follow up on his talks in New York last month with a Burmese envoy.

That meeting with minister U Thang was the highest US contact with Burma’s military government in nearly a decade.

The West is seeking new ways to promote dialogue between the military junta and the imprisoned democratic opposition.

Mr Campbell said he expected engagement with Burma to be a “long, slow and painful” process.

Tentative steps

He said the American mission would talk to Burma’s military government, representatives of ethnic minorities, and the pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“We intend to go to Burma in the next few weeks for a fact-finding mission,” Mr Campbell told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

He did not specify who would take part in the trip, but another official said Mr Campbell hoped to go himself but it would depend on whether the junta gives him access to the opposition.

Mr Campbell also said that the dialogue would “supplement rather than replace the sanction regimes that has been at the centre of our Burma policy for many years”.

“We will not judge the success of our effort at pragmatic engagement by the results of a handful of meetings. Engagement for its own sake is obviously not a goal for US policy,” he said.

The fact-finders’ goal, he said, was to gain a better understanding of the junta, which he described as “a group of men that have self-isolated themselves”.

The military regime has scheduled elections for next year which the opposition National League for Democracy plans to shun.

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed by the junta to meet senior Western diplomats earlier this month for talks focused on the long-standing Western sanctions.

Reports suggest Ms Suu Kyi has softened her views on sanctions in recent times, concluding they are adversely affecting the lives of ordinary Burmese while the military rulers still manage to conduct trade with China and other neighbours.

The junta has kept Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the past two decades after her National League for Democracy swept elections in 1990 but was barred from taking power.
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Myanmar PM leaves for 15th ASEAN summit in Thailand
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-22 13:02:28            Print

YANGON, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) — Myanmar Prime Minister General Thein Sein left Nay Pyi Taw Thursday to attend the 15th Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and related meetings in Hua Hin, Thailand, official sources from the new capital said.

At the invitation of his Thai counterpart Abhisit Veijajiva, Thein Sein will be attending the summits scheduled for Friday to Sunday in the southern Thai beach resort town.

Thailand stands the 2009 ASEAN chairmanship.

The last 14th ASEAN Summit in Hua Hin in February-March this year touched on the implementation of ASEAN Charter and regional and international issues, global financial crisis, disaster management, food and energy security, and regional and international situation.

At the summit, the ASEAN heads of government signed the Declaration on Roadmap for ASEAN Community. Other agreements were also inked which are — ASEAN Petroleum Security Agreement, ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, ASEAN Comprehensive Investment Agreement, Protocol to Implement the 7th Package of Commitments under ASEAN Framework Agreement on Service, and three programs for mutual recognition of ASEAN Quality.

A follow-up ASEAN summits with China, Japan, South Korea, India, East Asia and the United Nations in Pattaya in April were forced to cancel after thousands of red-shirt demonstrators of the anti-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) stormed in the summit venues.

Myanmar, which joined the ASEAN along with Laos in July 1997, ratified the ASEAN Charter in July last year.

Myanmar has urged its people to strive together in building the ASEAN community, anticipating that the future emergence of the ASEAN community by 2015 will benefit Myanmar citizens along with other regional members in sharing the fruits of peace and stability, prosperity and socio-cultural development.

ASEAN’s three pillars are known as political security community, economic community and socio-culture community.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Editor: Deng Shasha http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/22/content_12296977.htm
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Asean and human rights: closing the implementation gap
By HOMAYOUN ALIZADEH
Published on October 22, 2009

Tomorrow, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is set to launch the first regional human rights mechanism in the Asia-Pacific region, to be known as the Asean Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). There is much hope and expectation surrounding this occasion, as it represents an important commitment by states in the region to move beyond mere words and towards the implementation of their human rights commitments on the ground.

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the international community has been relatively successful in coming to an agreement on what human rights are, and the concomitant obligations they create for states. The ongoing challenge lies in establishing effective human rights mechanisms, ranging from commissions to courts, which can turn these noble ideas into reality.

It is at the regional level, namely in Africa, Europe and the Americas, that the most effective mechanisms have been established to close the human rights implementation gap. States in each of these areas recognised that regional human rights mechanisms formed an integral part of their vision to build a more peaceful, stable and prosperous regional community. Leaders realised that focusing on relations between states was not enough, and that relations between states and the people within their borders also needed to be addressed.

Establishing human rights mechanisms at a more localised level not only places them in closer proximity to the people who need to access them. Doing so also enables these mechanisms to operate within, and simultaneously address human rights issues that arise from local historical, cultural and geographical circumstances. The development of credible and effective regional human rights mechanisms, however, does take time. It requires the engagement of civil society and national human rights institutions from below, the initiative of the commissioners from within, and the political will of member states from above.

Experience has shown how regional mechanisms can improve upon mechanisms and instruments at the global level. For instance, in the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, concerns regarding economic and social rights, such as the right to food, health and education, meant that these rights were treated as equally open to legal protection as civil and political rights. This left human rights mechanisms at the global level playing catch up, with an Optional Protocol only adopted last year enabling the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to consider individual complaints.

For its part, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has expanded significantly from its humble beginnings in 1959. Its original mandate of a convening forum soon evolved into a mandate to conduct on-site country visits, as commissioners used their initiative to travel the country and meet with people from all walks of life. By 1965, the Commission was granted the authority by the member states of the Organisation of American States to investigate and decide on individual complaints. Fourteen years later, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had been established alongside the Commission to provide legally binding decisions on individual cases of alleged human rights violations.

Despite their very different paths of development, the regional human rights mechanisms in Africa, the Americas and Europe today share certain common features. These features include regional human rights instruments that reflect international standards; commissioners who are independent and impartial experts in human rights; mandates that enable the mechanisms to do both promotion and protection work; competent and full-time secretariats with sufficient resources; their own rules of procedure, which include rules for interaction with both civil society and national human rights institutions; and cooperation with international human rights mechanisms.

As Asean pursues its Asean Vision 2020, now moved forward to 2015, to create a “community of caring societies” with “focus on the welfare and dignity of the human person and the good of the community”, the Asean Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights will have to work hard to establish itself as a credible regional mechanism and help close the gap between human rights rhetoric and the reality on the ground.

Homayoun Alizadeh is the regional |representative of the OHCHR Regional Office for Southeast Asia.  http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2009/10/22/opinion/Asean-and-human-rights-closing-the-implementation–30114969.html
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EU launches Burma aid fund

* Published: 22/10/2009 at 12:00 AM
* Newspaper section: News

The EU is launching a fund to improve job and food security in Burma in response to developments in the country’s political landscape.

European Commission to Thailand head David Lipman said the European Union was broadening its policy of sanctions and assistance to Burma by approving 35 million euros (1.75 billion baht) for the five-year Livelihood and Food Security Trust Fund programme to be launched later this month. The fund will be administered by the United Nations Office for Partnerships.

The EU has already contributed 60% of Burma’s post-cyclone Nargis relief and there has been a 100 million euro development project to assist health, education and jobs, Mr Lipman said.

The fund will call for proposals involving five areas of Rakkhine, Chin, Shan, central Burma and Kachin.

But Mr Lipman said the fund board and the Burmese government should ascertain as to whether it was too dangerous for non-governmental workers to enter certain areas.

The recent political developments in Burma, particularly the US announcement of direct engagement with the Burmese government, and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s proposal to the chairman of the State Peace and Development Council Than Shwe for a political dialogue with the junta, had accelerated the EU review of their approach, diplomatic sources said.  http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/26043/eu-launches-burma-aid-fund
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US to send rare mission to Burma

* Published: 22/10/2009 at 04:02 AM
* Online news: Asia

The United States said Wednesday it would send a rare mission to Burma in the coming weeks as it engages the reclusive regime but warned that the diplomacy would be “slow and painful.”

US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, seen here on October 14. The United States said Wednesday it would send a rare mission to Burma in the coming weeks as it engages the reclusive regime but warned that the diplomacy would be “slow and painful.”

Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said the trip would follow up on his talks last month with a senior official in New York — the highest-level US contact with the military regime in nearly a decade.

“We intend to go to Burma in the next few weeks for a fact-finding mission,” Campbell testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, using Burma’s earlier name.

Campbell did not specify who would take part in the trip. Another senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Campbell hoped to go himself but it would depend on whether the junta gives him access to the opposition.

Campbell told the committee that the US mission hoped to meet with the junta as well as detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and representatives of ethnic groups that have battled the military regime.

The junta has kept Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the past two decades after her National League for Democracy swept elections in 1990 but was barred from taking power.

President Barack Obama’s administration has sought to engage US adversaries including Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The administration, in a policy review, last month concluded that the longstanding US approach of isolating Burma had failed to bear fruit but said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.

Campbell, who has sought to reassure democracy activists, told the House committee that the dialogue was meant to supplement, not replace, economic sanctions targeting the junta.

“We expect engagement with Burma to be a long, slow, painful and step-by-step process,” Campbell said.

“We will not judge the success of our effort at pragmatic engagement by the results of a handful of meetings. Engagement for its own sake is obviously not a goal for US policy,” he said.

Campbell said that one goal was simply to gain a better understanding of the junta, which he described as “a group of men that have self-isolated themselves.”

“In my particular area, the country that we know the least about at a fundamental level, even less than North Korea, is Burma,” he said.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a conservative Republican, was sharply critical of the administration’s approach.

“With all due respect, we know all about Burma. It’s not an unknown quantity. It has a vicious gangster regime, one of the most despicable regimes in this planet,” he said.

“We are saying that they are a legitimate government to sit down with. They are not,” he said.

However, many US lawmakers and Burma democracy advocates have supported engagement with the regime.

Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said that engagement and sanctions “must be applied together.”

“Our policy of isolation over the past two decades has resulted in China’s growing political and commercial influence in Burma and little progress in supporting those calling for reform,” Berman said.

A State Department official, Stephen Blake, quietly visited Burma in March to hold talks with both the junta and the opposition. It was the first trip by a senior US envoy to the country in more than seven years.

In August, Burma’s military leader Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with a visiting US senator, Jim Webb, a leading advocate of engaging the junta. http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/157782/us-to-send-rare-mission-to-burma
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Mobile phones allowed in Myanmar’s capital
Asia-Pacific News
Oct 22, 2009, 5:12 GMT

Yangon – Myanmar’s ruling military junta gave the green light to the use of mobile phones in the capital, Naypyitaw, beginning Thursday, four years after the country’s administration and military headquarters moved there.

‘CDMA mobiles are allowed for communication from today,’ an official from Naypyitaw who requested anonymity said Thursday, referring to a technology used to transmit mobile phone signals. ‘Other mobile systems are being tested.’

The use of mobile phones in Naypyitaw, 320 kilometres north of Yangon, had been banned since the junta moved its capital there from Yangon in November 2005. The reason for the prohibition was unknown, but there was speculation that it was because of security concerns.

‘I started to use my mobile phone today,’ a civil servant from one of the ministries said. ‘Now my family in Yangon can easily contact me via mobile wherever I go here.’
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1508540.php/Mobile-phones-allowed-in-Myanmar-s-capital
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Myanmar booth highlights Muse border town in China-ASEAN trade fair
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-22 18:22:42

YANGON, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) — Myanmar booth on display at the 6thChina-ASEAN trade fair being held in Nanning, capital of Southwest China’ Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, highlights the Muse border town as a town of facilitating trade and cooperation in levying tariff, companies attending the trade fair said on Thursday.

There are 242 entrepreneurs of 83 companies taking part in the five-day trade fair which began on Tuesday and will last until Saturday.

These entrepreneurs are from such sectors as agriculture, fishery, industry, manufacturing, gems, traditional handicrafts, forestry and hotel and tourism, the sources said.

Since joining the China-ASEAN trade fair in 2004, Myanmar booth featured the commercial hub of Mandalay in the second trade fair, tourism site of ancient city of Bagan in the third fair, port city of the former capital Yangon in 4th fair and cyber city of Yadanarpon in the 5th fair, the sources said, adding the country won the best booth, best design and best creativity awards in the 4th China-ASEAN trade fair in 2007.

In the 5th China-ASEAN trade fair, Myanmar won the best booth award again.

In December last year, a three-day Myanmar-China border trade fair was held in the Muse 105th Mile Border Trade Zone on the Myanmar side.

The 8th Myanmar-China border trade fair, participated by companies and enterprises from both countries, displayed products from respective countries at over 200 booths.

Muse border trade point stands the biggest out of 11 with neighboring countries, where 70 percent of Myanmar’s border trade are carried out.

According to Chinese official statistics, China-Myanmar bilateral trade amounted to 2.626 billion U.S. dollars in 2008, up26.4 percent.

Up to the end of 2008, China’s contracted investments in Myanmar reached 1.331 billion dollars, of which mining, electric power and oil and gas respectively took 866 million dollars, 281 million dollars and 124 million dollars.

China now stands the 4th in Myanmar’s foreign investment line-up.

China’s Nanning and Myanmar’s Yangon established friendship city relationship in July this year.
Editor: Wang Guanqun
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/22/content_12299342.htm
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Key Republicans Oppose Engagement with Burma
By LALIT K JHA  Thursday, October 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — Key US congressional leaders of the opposition Republican Party have expressed open opposition to the Obama administration’s policy of engaging the authoritarian Burmese regime.

The Republican legislators were testifying at a Congressional hearing on Burma on Wednesday.

“I wish to underscore that I oppose dialogue with the Burmese military junta and oppose the offer of further carrots in the form of expanded economic assistance,” said Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Member of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

“Not surprisingly, engagement has been tried, and it has failed,” she said. “The Bush administration engaged with the Burmese junta twice.  Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Eric John, now our ambassador to Thailand, flew to Beijing in June of 2007, a mere two years ago, to engage with representatives of the Burmese regime.

“And what was the junta’s response to Mr John’s request for a more open and humane political system?  Following street protests a few months later in which Buddhist monks joined students, political activists and ordinary citizens, the regime responded with batons and bullets,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

The Bush administration’s second attempt at engagement followed Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. The US Agency for International Development Administrator at that time, Henrietta Fore, and Admiral Timothy Keating of the US Pacific Command, flew to Burma in the storm’s aftermath with initial relief supplies, but the regime-controlled media described the humanitarian effort as a US preparation for invasion, the congresswoman said.

Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, who recently led the first talks ever held between US officials and Burmese military leaders, told the hearing that a team would head to Burma to follow up on his talks last month in New York.

Campbell told the committee that the US mission hoped to meet with the junta as well as detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and representatives of ethnic groups.

Stating that there has been no change in the situation in Burma, as hundreds of political prisoners including Suu Kyi remain imprisoned, and there has been a deterioration in the human rights situation in the country, Ros-Lehtinen asked: “In light of this, how can anyone credibly argue that engaging the Burmese regime with new carrots, however fresh, particularly as its behavior is getting markedly worse, advance US security interests and our foreign policy priorities?”

Republican Dana Rohrabacher said the new Burma policy of the Obama administration was alarming. “I think that there’s reason for alarm, among people who believe in liberty and freedom, as to what the policies of this administration will be,” he said.
“We see the president overseas apologizing to tyrants and people who oppress their own people.  And we’re going to watch very closely what’s going on in Burma, because for us to be expanding our relationships, opening up ties with the Burmese junta, is the worst possible course of action,” Rohrabacher said.

“It is immoral.  It’s going to send the wrong message to the Burmese dictatorship.  It’s going to send the wrong message to the Burmese people.  We’re watching very carefully.  What we do in Burma will reflect—not only in our own country but it will really reflect what this administration stands for,” he said.

California congressman Ed Royce told the hearing: “In addition to the systemic rapes used as a weapon of terror there [in Burma], we have a situation where after the Cyclone Nargis hit, there were 150,000 human beings that perished.  And the military junta of course refused aid, refused aid from the United States, for those victims.

“Those are the same people who are still in power there.  And one of the reasons some of us have a rather jaundiced view of what’s likely, in terms of any empowerment of that leadership, is for five reasons having to do with national security,” he said.

“One is that North Korea uses Burma, uses the ports there and the airstrips, to transfer arms and to transfer contraband.  And that is why we were so concerned about the North Korean freighter that was headed towards Burma last summer.  The second point was that Burma purchases technologies that could be used in a nuclear program.  And that’s gotten a fair amount of publicity,” Royce said.

“The third is, one of North Korea’s principal arms companies has become very active inside of Burma in recent months.  The fourth was that last year when the US worked with India to deny a North Korean missile shipment to Iran, that plane was transiting through where? Through Burma, right?  And fifth, there are other reports of North Korea assisting in building a vast underground tunnel network near the capital in a place where some who have left that premises indicate it has nuclear—they have nuclear intentions there,” Royce said.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17041
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Bangladesh and Burma hold talks on border

Oct 22, 2009 (DVB)–Government officials from Bangladesh and Burma met on the Burmese side of the border yesterday in a bid to ease rising tension between the two countries, local sources said.

The talks focused on the controversial border fence being built by the Burmese, aimed at stemming cross-border smuggling and the movement of refugees. Burma has been accused of breaching the agreed demarcation of the fence by 150 feet.

“The Burmese delegation responded to the issue by saying that they will consider moving the construction backward if Bangladesh can show them proper documents,” said a border-based analyst, Khaing Pray Thein.

The 11-member Burmese delegation met with members of the frontier Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) paramilitary force in Maungdaw, in Arakan state.

Construction of the fence began in February but was suspended in April following a meeting between the Burmese border security force, Nasaka, and the BDR.

The project resumed however last month, and coincided with a military build-up on the Burmese side of the border. The move triggered a reaction from Dhaka, which reportedly sent three fresh BDR battalions to the area.

According to Khaing Pray Thein, the Burmese delegation yesterday denied that the troop build-up was a sign of aggression and said that they were only there for the fence construction and “didn’t mean any threat”.

The issue of the Bangladeshi fishermen allegedly detained by Nasaka last week was also raised at the meeting.

The Narinjara news agency last week quoted a Bangladeshi official who said that Nasaka personnel had crossed over to the Bangladeshi side of the Naff river and abducted the fishermen.

The two countries have also lined up their navies in the Bay of Bengal, following a fiery dispute over rights to explore offshore gas blocks. The matter has been brought before United Nations arbitration.

Reporting by Nan Kham Kaew http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=2979
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Money for rights at the ASEAN summit

Joseph Allchin

Oct 22, 2009 (DVB)–In recent days civil society groups have convened in Thailand to thrash out their own version of the official regional summit, starting tomorrow, and plain to see was the frustration at the gulf between the two.

Yesterday, the exiled Burmese activist Khin Ohmar was chosen by civil society groups to attend the 15th ASEAN summit as representative of Burmese Civil Society Organisations (CSO). Yet, according to Khin Ohmar, domestic Burmese organisations riled against her exiled status as being not representative of Burma. “There were a number of [Burmese] junta-backed agencies who were present at the ASEAN Peoples’ Forum, and they wanted to have somebody that they can influence,” she told DVB. This ‘somebody’ would be from a local group inside Burma “who is not able to have an independent voice to speak on the key problems that the Burmese people are facing.”

Whilst several of the more ‘modern’ ASEAN leaders play lip-service to Western discourse on human rights, it seems to have about as much currency as oil companies who talk about the environment: it’s a co-option of a ‘nice idea’. This ‘nice idea’ was recently honoured with a fresh ASEAN human rights monitor who would be answerable too, amongst other notable human rights abusers, the Burmese junta. It will have no punitive powers but would instead ‘promote’ human rights. “It’s a human rights commission for the government; it’s already so weak in so many ways,” Ohmar said.

What will no doubt be more on the minds of every well-funded leader, the military ones included, will be the future of trade both within ASEAN and between other international blocs and nations. In the pipeline is the intriguing potential of a free trade agreement (FTA) with China, India and the European Union, whilst human rights will likely form a pretty part of the packaging. The diversity of ASEAN will mean that trade agreements will mean different things to different nations; Burma will be affected in a very different manner to somewhere like Malaysia or Thailand, for instance. Many in India are concerned that the industrial might of nations like Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia will have a negative impact on India’s own industrial development, with those economies being able to out-do their Indian rivals.

This alone could have an effect on Burma, whose cheap labour and absence of industry regulations on the surface provide a tantalizing prospect for multinationals. It’s an issue that Burma economics expert Sean Turnell has termed a ‘race to the bottom’ with standards. In a turbulent future economy, without the debt-led spending of Western nations, Asian nations may have to compete for bargain basement industry. Labour and environmental standards could be the first casualty in such a race. Indian economist Asseem Srinavastava had suggested that a venture into Burma earlier this year by Tata motors of India provided an example of this, with the probability that it was done to bypass strict laws in India. In similar fashion it could induce other ASEAN nations to cut standards.

Burma is already believed to have some of the cheapest extraction costs for gas and oil, and is a Mecca for other controversial extractive industries like rare animal parts, traded openly in Burmese markets and logging. As Jon Buckrell from Global Witness told DVB yesterday, illegal logging has drastically eaten away at Burma’s forests, with a ton of Burmese teak now being sold for as little as $US300.

However, according to Turnell, “political instability tends to trump these sorts of concerns [over industry competition]”, with companies now “desperate not to locate in Burma”; the lack of infrastructure, rule of law, a credible banking system and trustworthy exchange rate are destroying Burma’s chances.

Burma has been a sort of bit part on the side of the more dynamic economies of ASEAN. Whilst its resources are eagerly tapped by companies in Singapore and elsewhere, its governance and development has remained more in league with tiger despots than tiger economies. A way round Burma’s domestic quagmire has been to bring its cheap labour to Thailand or Malaysia, which has now created special economic zones to accommodate the influx of industry. Yet Ohmar speaks of “major concern” over agreements which “have not consulted the people or civil society and do not have people integrated into the processes [of formulating trade regulations]”.

At the ASEAN people’s forum this week, Joy Chavez, an economics and agricultural expert from the Philippines, warned that the current crop of FTA agreements are “exclusionary…they do not link with the people of ASEAN [and] without people’s input there is a big danger”. Turnell further expressed angst about binding trade agreements with powerful blocs like the EU: “For me the worry would be the extent that the EU and other countries could lever away to express their unhappiness about human rights issues” if they signed an FTA.

The ASEAN policy of ‘non-interference’ is also key: like most bilateral agreements and bodies, all parties will seek to get the most out of it, whilst giving the least. So whilst ASEAN intends to become an EU-style free trade zone by 2020, the member states “will be desperate to protect their own industry”, according to Turnell, with ‘non-interference’ used to prevent other nations from upholding regulations. It’s the great legal expression of conservatism at the heart of the region, and will keep the economic powerhouses from spreading the potential wealth that exists in the region.

The cohesion of the group, whether horizontally, between national governments, or vertically, between its leaders and their subjects, is a major cause for concern. Essentially ASEAN will never achieve its targets of being a free trade bloc or of having progressive human dignity for all if leaders are not prepared to have the humility to submit to principles, rules and standards that that require interference or accountability. Its efficacy will be at the mercy of ‘big men’ who, for Khin Ohmar, have failed to show commitment. “Now we always make a joke; with ASEAN its one step forward, two steps backward. It’s like the same old story again”. http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=2980