BURMA RELATED NEWS – AUGUST 31, 2010
Aug 31st, 2010
Tue Aug 31, 7:06 am ET
YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s junta chief made an announcement via state media on Tuesday, dispelling rumours that he had retired from the army as part of a reshuffle ahead of a rare election in the country.
“Senior General Than Shwe sends message of felicitations to King of Malaysia,” read a front-page headline in the New Light of Myanmar along with other state newspapers, making clear the 77-year-old was still in control.
The regime mouthpiece also referred to Than Shwe as chairman of the State Peace and Development Council — the military regime’s official name — although it made no mention of last week’s secretive reshuffle.
News reports on Friday said the feared ruler, who has run the country since 1992, had stepped down from his military post ahead of the country’s first election in 20 years, although this was later denied by unnamed officials.
But they said more than 70 positions had changed in the biggest military reshuffle in decades, with top brass — including the army number three Thura Shwe Mann — retiring from their posts to stand in the November 7 poll.
An unnamed government officer close to the regime said on Saturday that Than Shwe and his deputy Maung Aye were “likely to retire soon”, probably after the election.
Analysts say the reshuffle is an attempt by Than Shwe to ensure loyalty among army ranks ahead of the poll and to control the outcome of the election, which has been widely dismissed as a sham by activists and the West.
Critics say the vote is designed to simply put a civilian face on the regime, in a country that has been ruled by the military since 1962.
A quarter of the legislature is reserved for serving army members, while the new military veterans were expected to join the main junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) to run in the poll.
Monday was the deadline for the 42 parties to register candidates for about 1,200 national and regional seats available.
The well-funded USDP said Monday that it would field more than 1,000 candidates, while the National Unity Party, also pro-government, said it had more than 990 people running.
But two main pro-democracy groups, the National Democratic Force and the Democratic Party (Myanmar), said they would field only 200 candidates between them, having faced financial constraints and a limited timetable to register candidates.
Party members have also been limited by campaigning restrictions and alleged intimidation.
Opposition groups have struggled to gain public recognition on the scale of the National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi’s party which won the last election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.
The party has now been disbanded by the junta after deciding to boycott the polls because of rules that barred Suu Kyi from running, as she is a serving prisoner.
The Nobel peace laureate has spent much of the last two decades in jail or under house arrest.
By Aung Hla Tun – Mon Aug 30, 11:41 pm ET
YANGON (Reuters) – An armed forces shake-up in military-controlled Myanmar has surprised even the soldiers as the ruling junta gears up for a November election in which its civilian proxies are expecting a resounding victory.
Dozens of generals have been promoted or have retired in one of the biggest overhauls of the top brass in decades, a move analysts say is aimed at tightening the military leadership’s grip on power, both in the barracks and in the political arena.
“Whoever goes where, or what role they are given, everyone knows the direction this shake-up is going,” said Aung Zaw, editor of the Thai-based Irrawaddy magazine.
“The regime is preparing for the preservation of the military and the future government, ensuring its people are in key positions to guarantee their smooth landing when they retire.”
Military insiders say those who are retiring, many of them years before the mandatory age, will run as politicians in a party set up by the regime to ensure control of the parliament that will emerge from elections on November 7.
Those promoted to plum military posts will be trusted proteges groomed to protect the institution’s financial and political interests and prop up a new government sure to be made up largely of retired, obedient soldiers in civilian clothing.
SILENT RESHUFFLE
The military and its mouthpiece, the state-controlled media, have been silent on the reshuffle.
“It’s a bit early to know for certain what has happened to whom,” a military source told Reuters, requesting anonymity for fear of repercussions.
“Of course, those newly promoted are very happy, but so far as I understand, most of those outgoing were caught by surprise when they heard they had to leave,” he said.
The election, the first since a 1990 poll won by the pro-democracy opposition and which the army chose to ignore, is viewed with skepticism by the West, which expects little change to the status quo when a civilian government takes over. Critics say the entire democratic process has been carefully crafted to sideline anyone not picked or vetted by the military,
which will have the final say on almost all policy decisions.
Few locals expect much in the way of reform.
“People can’t expect any meaningful changes. It’s just part of the process of putting the same wine into a new bottle,” said a retired civil servant in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.
Although opposition parties have been encouraged to take part, they complain they have limited resources and have had barely any time to prepare. Many activists are still in prison and campaign rules are so strict the parties have little opportunity to reach out to the electorate.
One military source said last week aging junta supremo Than Shwe and deputies Maung Aye and Thura Shwe Mann were among those who had retired, suggesting they might be shaping up to take the positions of president and vice presidents.
However, other sources said Shwe Mann, 62, might succeed the reclusive Than Shwe as the country’s leader.
China warships dock in Burma, rattling rival naval power India
By Ben Arnoldy – Mon Aug 30, 1:22 pm ET
New Delhi – Two Chinese warships docked at a Burmese port Sunday, highlighting China’s expanding naval presence near Asia’s other rising giant, India.
Chinese news agency Xinhua described the friendly port call as a first-ever in Burma – also known as Myanmar – by Chinese warships. It comes amid heightened tensions between Beijing and New Delhi, including India’s reported suspension of military exchanges with China.
Though the two Asian heavyweights share a disputed border in the Himalayas, the Indian Ocean could become a more serious flashpoint for their overlapping ambitions. Beijing is developing ports around India to help secure Chinese maritime routes while India’s security establishment is debating how best to assume leadership in the Indian Ocean.
“With this particular port of call I don’t think there is anything that needs to be done. Just watch very closely,” says P.K. Ghosh, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi and a retired Navy officer. But China, he says, is sending a signal. “The underlying message is a strategic message: ‘Look, we are in the area and we can operate in the region.’ ”
China’s ’string of pearls’In recent years, China has expanded port facilities in countries that border India, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Indian strategists refer to the projects as a “string of pearls” encircling India in its strategic back yard.
Dr. Ghosh points out that the ports are commercial structures, not designed to be naval bases. But, he adds, “if a push comes to a shove, they can definitely use it for a base.”
The Indian Ocean will only grow in importance for both India and China as their interconnectivity with the global economy grows. The Indian Ocean is the Silk Road of the 21st century, moving Gulf oil and African minerals to the world’s two most populous nations.
The securing of the sea lanes – once the province of Great Britain, then the US – could evolve cooperatively, rather than competitively, to include India and China. Indeed, both countries have participated in a global effort to protect ships from pirates off Somalia.
But for India to realize its ambition to be able to project its Navy over a distance to secure economic access abroad, it will need access first to regional ports – some of which are now under Chinese expansion.
“We saw that happen in Sri Lanka. When Delhi slept over Colombo’s invitation to build a new port at Hambantota, China stepped in,” said C. Raja Mohan, the strategic affairs editor of the Indian Express, at a talk given before a packed public audience in New Delhi last month.
India and China: a complicated relationshipCompounding the issue is the wariness in New Delhi about China. While the two Asian giants have found common cause over climate change and expansion of bilateral trade, diplomatic tit-for-tats dating back to the 1962 Chinese invasion continue to hamper better relations.
The two countries failed to resolve their border disputes in the Himalayas earlier this decade, prompting India to beef up border infrastructure in the face of Chinese incursions.
Recently, Beijing denied a visa to an Indian general who planned to join a military delegation to China – reportedly because he oversaw Army operations in Indian-controlled Kashmir. An Indian newspaper reported Saturday that India had responded by suspending military exchanges. When asked by the Associated Press, China said this was news to them while India refused to comment.
Meanwhile, the Indian Express reported Saturday on Page 1 that the state-run People’s Daily posted in a discussion forum an article titled “How likely is China’s launch of a limited war against India?”
While the Indian press plays up Chinese “provocations,” officials in Delhi tread lightly, taking care to avoid direct clashes with Beijing.
India’s next stepsBut among Indian naval experts, China’s moves have spurred along a debate over how India should assert itself in the Indian Ocean.
During his talk in New Delhi last month, Dr. Mohan argued for a more assertive approach that includes basing agreements and naval assistance to “weaker states of the Indian Ocean littoral.”
“No great power has built a blue-water navy capable of projecting force without physical access and political arrangements for ‘forward presence,’ ” said Mohan. “This would mean creation of arrangements for friendly ports and turnaround facilities in other nations that will increase the range, flexibility, and sustainability of Indian naval operations.”
Mohan says this makes Indian strategists uncomfortable. For decades they have rejected anyone building “foreign bases” in the Indian Ocean – something India itself must now do, Mohan argues.
Ghosh argues against becoming the big brother of the region. In 2008, he helped organize the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, a forum for talking and cooperation on common issues between the naval chiefs of 28 Indian Ocean nations.
“Initially there was a lot of apprehension in the minds of a lot of countries as to what was the hidden agenda,” says Ghosh.
India, he says, went to great lengths to explain this wasn’t an effort to become big brother but to create a forum with the Indian Navy – the largest in the region – as the “unintrusive fulcrum.”
For now, that’s the right posture for India, argues Ghosh.
“I firmly believe that if you’ve got to carry a big stick, please talk softly,” he says. “I think there are a lot of negativities associated with being visualized as a hegemon.”
Yangon, Aug 31 : Myanmar’s two pro-junta parties have submitted large candidate lists for the country’s Nov 7 general election, dwarfing the number of pro-democracy candidates, party sources said Tuesday.
Parties had to submit their candidate lists to the election commission Monday to qualify for the Nov 7 polls, Myanmar’s first in two decades.
The pro-junta Union Solidarity Development Party, whose membership is packed with retired military men, will field 1,163 candidates, enough to fight all contested seats in the lower, upper and regional houses of parliament.
Another pro-government party, the National Unity Party, has registered 994 candidates, the party’s executive committee member Han Shwe said.
Myanmar’s two main pro-democracy parties, the National Democratic Force and Democratic Party Myanmar (DPM), have only registered 160 and 49 candidates, respectively.
“We could only register 49 candidates because of a lack of money,” DPM chief general secretary Than Than Nu told DPA.
Parties have complained about the election commission’s registration fee of USD 500 per candidate, a considerable amount in a country where the annual per capita income is less than USD 600 and the monthly minimum wage is about USD 30.
The parties have also complained of a lack of time to prepare for the polls. The election date was only announced Aug 13.
Only 42 parties have qualified to contest the election, and the election commission, set up by the military regime, is expected to reject several of the registered candidates.
Election regulations passed earlier this year effectively forced Myanmar’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to withdraw from the election contest.
The rules stipulated that political parties could not include prisoners among their members. The NLD is led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently serving an 18-month jail term which is expected to expire a week after the polls.
In Myanmar’s last election, held in 1990, the NLD won 392 of the contested 485 seats. Some 93 parties ran in that election, the first democratic polls in the country since 1962, when General Ne Win toppled elected premier U Nu in a coup.
Myanmar’s junta has prevented the NLD from taking power for the past two decades. A new constitution ensures that even if a pro-democracy party wins the Nov 7 polls, the military will be able to block legislation through the Senate, a quarter of which is appointed by the junta.
Published: 30/08/2010 at 10:56 PM
Online news: Breakingnews
Burma’s two biggest pro-democracy parties running in the upcoming election said Monday they had managed to field just a tenth of the number of candidates put up by the main pro-junta parties.
As Monday’s deadline for registering candidates arrived, opposition parties failed to find enough people to seriously challenge the military government.
Opposition parties said would-be politicians faced formidable hurdles, including a fee of $500 per candidate — the equivalent of several months’ wages for most people — and a tight timetable to register to stand.
With fewer financial woes, the government’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) said it would put forward more than 1,000 candidates in the country’s first poll in 20 years.
And the pro-junta National Unity Party said it would have more than 990 candidates. “So we think the USDP will be our main rival,” said spokesman Han Shwe.
In comparison the National Democratic Force (NDF) and the Democratic Party (Burma), the largest pro-democracy groups, said they would field only about 200 candidates between them for the November 7 vote for some 1,200 national and regional seats.
Thu Wai, chairman of the Democratic Party (Burma), said his group would put forward about 60 candidates.
“We are still waiting for the candidate list from the regions, but we will not get as many as we estimated lately,” he said.
NDF chairman Than Nyein said the party, which is made up of former members of detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, had about 140 candidates.
More than 40 political parties have been given permission to stand in the polls, but some have expressed concerns over the problems they face, including alleged intimidation of members.
The polls have been widely dismissed by critics as a charade to entrench military power. The junta recently conducted a major reshuffle within military ranks and several top members retired to contest the elections as USDP members.
A quarter of the legislature is reserved for serving military, in addition to army veterans who win positions as junta-backed civilians.
The government-favoured USDP has merged with the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a rich pro-junta group with up to 27 million members, including civil servants compelled to join for the good of their careers.
Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi, who has been detained for much of the past 20 years, won the country’s last election in 1990 by a landslide but was denied office by the junta.
She is barred from running this year because she is a serving prisoner and her National League for Democracy — which would have been the greatest threat to the junta — is boycotting the poll on grounds that the rules are unfair.
The party has subsequently been disbanded by the ruling generals, and no other opposition group has managed to garner the same level of support and recognition among the public.
Bangkok Post – Opinion: Political transition: a chance for progress?
Published: 31/08/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: News
The government of Burma has announced it will hold a general election on Nov 7, the first to be held since 1990. This may provide an opportunity for Burma’s military-led government to improve the country’s political governance.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged the government to honour its publicly stated commitments to hold inclusive, free and fair elections, noting that any transition to democracy should also include the release of all political prisoners without delay.
In addition to a possible move toward a civilian-led government, it is also likely that improvements in political governance will present significant opportunities for economic and social advancement for the country, for an emerging middle class, and especially for the estimated one-third of Burma’s 50 million people currently living in poverty.
Cease-fire agreements keep a tenuous peace in Burma today, between the central government and most of the dozens of ethnic groups along border areas where decades of conflict had left hundreds of thousands of villagers displaced in previous years. New transport routes and the gradual lifting of government restrictions on travel have increased economic and trade connections and opened social integration between the better-off central region and the more remote ethnic communities in the border highlands to an extent never seen before.
Over the past five years, the United Nations has significantly increased its humanitarian aid within the country, working closely with the government and with international non-governmental organisations to provide food, medicine and relief aid to more than 5 million people in need, and over a larger part of the country. But access remains uneven and still severely restricted in areas where the threat of conflict remains.
International donors including the United States and European countries have welcomed this opening of the humanitarian space, doubling the funding of critical relief available to Burma, where sanctions maintained by the very same countries restrict trade, economic activity and direct bilateral assistance to Burma. While there is much work to be done, the increased humanitarian aid has paid off, with clear progress shown in meeting several of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Cyclone Nargis, which struck Burma’s agriculturally-rich Ayeyarwady Delta region in 2008, taking more than 140,000 lives and destroying hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice paddy, is still exacting a heavy cost on Burma, as affected villagers and farmers struggle to recover their livelihoods.
The tragedy of Nargis also led to an opening for the international community, with Burma’s government allowing the UN and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and others to provide direct aid to the affected Delta areas and to other areas of need in Burma.
Alongside my UN colleagues and Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of Asean, I worked closely with Burma’s government to increase and target international aid in the immediate aftermath of Nargis.
Recognising that major economic structural changes were also needed, I urged the government to look abroad for help, and offered the assistance of the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) in suggesting needed technical and policy assistance to the government.
Ultimately, Escap brought Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to Burma’s capital on Dec 15 last year to offer his advice on how best to bring about development and poverty reduction.
Despite the sanctions of the United States and Europe, Burma’s neighbours, India and China, and other countries are making investments and constructing gas pipelines, deepwater ports, and roads, and engaging in business activities sparking significant economic growth in Burma. The next government, whatever its make-up, will face critical economic and development choices, and in weighing these they have the opportunity to make a real difference in the country’s future:
- Investment or lost windfall? The continuing development of Burma’s large offshore natural gas holdings means that the new government will soon benefit from substantial increased export earnings, revenue that could fund economic and social investment – or become a squandered windfall, as has happened in all too many developing nations.
FOpening up the economy to those on the bottom. Closing the development gap is critical to achieving social and economic security and is most rapidly achieved through the active participation of the poor. Improving the assets and skills of the working poor, and the public services available to them, directly promotes growth and stability for the economy as a whole. Countries grow faster when the bottom half is participating and contributing productively.
- Strategic and structural economic reform. A new government may possess a unique opportunity to determine the path of development and economic growth for the country, especially by promoting and supporting the emergence of a middle class. Making the economy more inclusive, investing in rural and social infrastructure and encouraging competition and small business enterprises are badly needed reforms that a new government can take on, if Burma is to move forward.
- Helping small farmers and traders. Strategic investments in agriculture and the rural economy has multiple benefits, by addressing food security and rural livelihood issues, and sparking significant economic and development benefits in the rural communities, where Burma’s poorest people live. Rural incomes will increase when farmers receive a higher price for their produce and when their costs of production are reduced. A recent government decree reforming the government-controlled rice industry and establishing a rice export board is a positive step that could benefit small farmers, traders and villagers both in the Ayeyarwady Delta and beyond.
The partnership formed between the government of Burma, the UN and Asean was of critical importance in assuring the continuing recovery of the Delta region after the tragedy of Cyclone Nargis.
With a new government in place following elections that have now been announced, the UN and the international community are again willing to assist Burma in making critical choices for the inclusive and sustainable economic growth of the country and the human development of all its people.
Dr Noeleen Heyzer is Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of Escap.
Published: 31/08/2010 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Business
The government is moving ahead with a Thai-Burmese special economic zone, aiming to sign up a project co-operation framework agreement with Rangoon at the end of this year.
Deputy Commerce Minister Alongkorn Ponlaboot said the zone would be located in Mae Sot, Tak province, and require investment of about 1.17 billion baht.
Already approved by the cabinet, the zone would include a logistics park, industrial estate, an integrated export and import promotion area, customs processing and bonded warehouse services linked with Burma’s special economic zone at Myawaddy.
The Thai government is asking Rangoon to settle on a site to construct a second four-lane bridge in the area. The first bridge is also located at Mae Sot, linking with Myawaddy.
Mr Alongkorn said the Thai government was committed to supporting three key construction projects: a 28.6-kilometre road development, the new bridge worth 400 million baht and a renovation of the existing bridge.
He said the Mae Sot development plan would be a pilot project that could later expand to other border provinces.
Border trade between Thailand and Burma totalled 134.76 billion baht last year, with Thai exports representing 42.6 billion baht. For the first six months of this year, trade was worth 68.66 billion baht, up by 6.5% year-on-year. Thai exports totalled 28.34 billion baht, a rise of 44.6%, with imports declining 10% to 40.31 billion.
The Thai government is also preparing to develop a land transport route linking Kanchanaburi province with the port of Dawei (Tavoy) in Burma as a gateway to markets to the west of the country.
The Dawei-Kanchanaburi road link would also be connected to a new 1,360-km highway network linking India, Burma and Thailand.
The route would run from Moreh in India to Mae Sot in Thailand via Bagan in Burma.
Mr Alongkorn said the government also wants Burma to accelerate construction of a deep-sea port at Dawei and suggests Burma declare the site a special economic zone to facilitate trade and investment. The Dawei infrastructure project is said to be worth about 400 billion baht in total.
Dawei Port is a major factor in the overall strategy to create an East-West Economic Corridor linking Danang in Vietnam to Mawlamyine in Burma.
The port could take up to 10 years to build. It would be part of a network that could shorten the journey from southern China to the Andaman Sea from 16-18 days to just six days, bypassing the Malacca Strait.
UN Learns Disaster Management Lessons From Myanmar Calamity
August 31, 2010 6:51 a.m. EST
AHN News Staff
Bangkok, Thailand (AHN) – The United Nations said Monday it had learnt quite a few lessons in disaster management in the wake of the catastrophic cyclone, Nargis, that hit Myanmar in May 2008, inundating the Irrawaddy Delta and leaving thousands dead.
A UN representative, speaking at a conference organized by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to discuss the lessons learnt in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, said the calamity had primed the humanitarian body to “send aid faster next time”.
Conference participants stressed the need for quick international reaction to such disasters, after the delay in getting assistance to Myanmar following the cyclone resulted in the death of many more people due to starvation and sickness.
The UN official told the gathering that, “trust has been built in the two years since Cyclone Nargis, when bureaucratic difficulties prevented outside aid from reaching those affected for the critical first days and weeks.”
The UN’s rescue operations in Myanmar suffered initially because the reclusive military junta refused to grant visas to aid workers for several months. An estimated 140,000 people perished in the worst natural disaster in the country.
The UN then drew an action plan with ASEAN for emergency and recovery efforts, but the interminable delay on part of the humanitarian body to tie up earlier with the Asian bloc countries drew widespread flak.
ASEAN Secretary-General, Surin Pitsuwan, said Monday that, “Myanmar’s attitude to international aid improved in the months following the disaster…the country has come to realize there is help out there from the international community.”
Wall Street Journal – North Korean Pair Viewed as Key to Secret Arms Trade
By JAY SOLOMON
SEOUL—A North Korean arms chief and Pyongyang’s former ambassador to the United Nation’s nuclear agency have emerged as key figures in an intensifying international effort to curb North Korea’s weapons-trading activities.
The global dealings of the two men, Chun Byung-ho and Yun Ho-jin, whom North Korea analysts believe to be related through marriage, date back to the 1980s. They have played leading roles in North Korea’s development and testing of atomic weapons, according to current and former U.S. officials, Asian intelligence analysts and U.N. nonproliferation staffers.
Syria and Myanmar.
On Monday, the Obama administration announced economic sanctions against various individuals and entities involved in Pyongyang’s nuclear work and in alleged illicit trading activities. The Treasury Department named Mr. Yun and the North Korean body headed by Mr. Chun—the Second Economic Committee of Pyongyang’s ruling Korean Workers’ Party. The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those named and bar Americans from conducting business with them. Treasury also warned that foreign firms doing business with them risked sanctions.
The Second Economic Committee oversees a little-known foreign trade office with the Orwellian name of Office 99. The proceeds from the Office’s arms sales go directly to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Pyongyang’s senior leadership, according to these officials and recent North Korean defectors.
“It is broadly believed that the Second Economic Committee…plays the largest and most prominent role in nuclear, other WMD and missile-related development programs, as well as arranging and conducting arms-related exports” for North Korea, says a report issued in May by the U.N. committee tasked with enforcing international sanctions on Pyongyang.
The U.S. and U.N. recently have intensified efforts to combat the Second Economic Committee and Office 99, alarmed by Pyongyang’s two nuclear-weapons tests and its alleged role in sinking a South Korean naval vessel in March. Last year, the U.N. formally sanctioned Mr. Yun and his arms company, Namchongang Trading Co.
North Korean arms shipments moving through Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and the South China Sea have been seized or turned back by the U.S. and its allies over the past few years. A Japanese court convicted a Tokyo-based trading company in November of procuring military technologies for Pyongyang with the intent of shipping them to Myanmar.
Still, Messrs. Chun and Yun’s decades of experience in the weapons trade pose a challenge to an international community keen to disrupt Pyongyang’s proliferation activities, say U.S. and Asian officials. “There is no reason to assume that Chun and Yun won’t sell nuclear weapons,” says David Asher, a former Bush administration official who has tracked Pyongyang’s arms trade for a decade. “There needs to be an active effort to disrupt their WMD networks and drive them out of business now, before it’s too late.”
The two men have established a network of front companies in Asia, Europe and the Middle East and have partnered with Southeast Asian, Japanese and Taiwanese criminal syndicates to move cash and contraband, say U.S. officials. And Mr. Yun has used the political cover provided by Pyongyang’s closest ally, China, to openly conduct business in cities such as Beijing and Shenyang, drawing official rebukes from Washington.
North Korean diplomats at Pyongyang’s U.N. mission in New York did not respond to requests for comment. Messrs. Chun and Yun couldn’t be reached.
Current and former U.S. officials say North Korea’s operations resemble in both scale and tactics those of Pakistan’s Abdul Qadeer Khan—one of the most notorious arms dealers in recent years. U.S. officials fear that isolated North Korea, desperate for hard currency, could accelerate its arms exports in a bid to prop up Kim Jong Il’s finances.
Mr. Chun, now 84 years old, and his Second Economic Committee emerged as major global arms exporters in the 1980s, as North Korea shipped as much as $3 billion worth of rockets, pistols and submarines to Tehran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, say recent defectors and North Korea analysts.
Pyongyang assisted some communist and socialist countries militarily during the 1960s and 1970s, and provided fighter pilots to aid Egypt and Syria in their wars against Israel. But North Korea found a largely captive market in Iran, which faced a U.S.-led weapons embargo as the West threw its support behind Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein.
One senior North Korean defector who worked in Pyongyang’s munitions industries says he was dispatched to Iran by the Second Economic Committee in 1987 with the task of constructing missile batteries on the Iranian island of Kish to help Tehran better control the movement of ships through the Straits of Hormuz.
His main interlocutor was Iran’s elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The former hydro-mechanic says camaraderie developed between his 100-man team and the Guard, despite their different backgrounds.
Mr. Chun’s control over the Second Economic Committee was tied to his close relationship with Pyongyang’s ruling Kim family, say defectors and North Korea experts. The Russian-trained bureaucrat served as a member of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung’s bodyguard unit. He rose up the ranks of the Korean Workers’ Party with the political support of Kim Jong Il, eventually securing a position on Pyongyang’s most powerful political body, the National Defense Commission.
North Korea’s high-level defector, Hwang Jang-yop, has identified Mr. Chun as the broker of a key barter trade in the 1990s with Pakistan that significantly advanced Pyongyang’s nuclear infrastructure. The agreement resulted in North Korea shipping parts for long-range missiles to Islamabad in exchange for A.Q. Khan sending centrifuge equipment used in producing nuclear fuel.
As Mr. Chun pushed forward North Korea’s nuclear program from Pyongyang, Mr. Yun, believed to be the husband of Mr. Chun’s second daughter, emerged as a key player in procuring technologies for the Second Economic Committee from Europe, according to U.S., U.N. and European officials.
Mr. Yun, 66, arrived in Vienna in 1985 as Pyongyang’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The English and German speaker led negotiations with the U.N. agency aimed at forging a nuclear-inspection agreement with North Korea, and he helped oversee a 1992 tour of his nation’s Yongbyon nuclear facility for Hans Blix, the IAEA’s then-managing director.
“Yun was dedicated to turning things around. I truly believe that,” says Willi Theis, who worked closely with Mr. Yun as the head of the IAEA’s safeguards unit overseeing North Korea. Mr. Theis is now retired.
Still, concerns grew inside the IAEA about Mr. Yun’s activities, as relations between Pyongyang and the international community deteriorated, according to IAEA officials.
In 1993, North Korea broke off talks with the IAEA over the agency’s demands for an inspection of the country’s nuclear operations, and the U.S. charged Pyongyang with secretly stockpiling plutonium for atomic weapons. The next year, the Clinton administration threatened to bomb the Yongbyon facility if North Korea didn’t explain where the plutonium had gone. Mr. Yun grew embittered with the diplomatic process and mistrustful of the U.S. and its allies, according to IAEA staff and journalists who met with him.
Mr. Theis says he spent hours discussing the process with Mr. Yun and pressed the Agency to remain engaged with Pyongyang. The West German-born nuclear inspector says he grew suspicious of Mr. Yun’s many trips to other European cities and his contacts with local companies. Mr. Yun even hinted to Mr. Theis that he might have no choice but to directly support North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programs if relations with the IAEA collapsed.
“He came to the conclusion that dealing with the international community was totally disappointing,” said Mr. Theis in a phone interview from Austria. “Mr. Yun had definitely learned how to establish contacts with all types of people [while in Vienna]—not just from the IAEA, but managers of companies.”
Mr. Theis’s concerns about Mr. Yun would be borne out in 2003, when a German businessman, Hans Werner Truppel, was arrested and eventually convicted by a Stuttgart court of selling 22 metric tons of aluminum tubes to Mr. Yun.
The North Korean and his company, Namchongang Trading, used offices in Beijing and Shenyang, China, to place orders for the equipment, which is critical to building centrifuges needed to enrich uranium, according to a German Customs Bureau report. U.S. officials briefed on the case were alarmed that Mr. Yun conducted some of his business through the offices of Shenyang Aircraft Industry Co., a Chinese state-owned firm.
In the ensuing months, the State Department aired its concerns about Mr. Yun’s activities to China’s government, according to former U.S. officials. But Beijing took no action.
China’s ministries of foreign affairs and commerce didn’t respond to requests for comment. Shenyang Aircraft says it had no recollection of any dealings with Mr. Yun.
Messrs. Chun and Yun have sought to accelerate North Korea’s weapons sales and procurement in recent years and allegedly have played important roles in strengthening Pyongyang’s military ties to countries such as Syria and Myanmar, say current and former U.S. officials.
North Korea analysts believe most of these transactions have been conducted through Office 99, which they describe as an international sales office and slush fund for Kim Jong Il.
“Anything that has to do with the imports and exports of weapons flows through Office 99,” says Oh Kongdan, a North Korea expert at Virginia’s Institute of Defense Analyses, a Pentagon-funded think tank. “It’s a royal patronage system.”
U.S. officials say that since the late 1990s they detected through intelligence channels intensifying military cooperation between North Korea and Syria, focused on everything from the development of chemical weapons to missiles.
In September 2007, Israeli jets bombed a facility in eastern Syria that U.S. officials say was a nearly operational replica of North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. As many as 10 North Koreans died in the Israeli attack, according to U.S. officials. Mr. Yun and Namchongang Trading are believed to have played a central role in brokering development of the facility.
“That particular company was all over the nuclear trade. There’s no question about it,” says John Bolton, who served as the Bush administration’s top non-proliferation official. Both Syria and North Korea have denied cooperating on developing nuclear technologies.
Over the past two years, U.S. and U.N. officials have also voiced concerns about North Korea’s deepening military ties with Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma.
North Korea engineers have helped Myanmar build a maze of fortified bunkers to house senior government officials and military installations, according to Burmese defectors and commercial satellite photos. Current and former U.S. officials say Washington has intervened to block the transfer of Scud missiles to Myanmar from Pyongyang.
In June, Japan’s Ministry of Economy and Trade banned Tokyo-based Toko Boeki Trading Co. and device maker Riken Denshi from conducting international trade after three of their affiliated executives, one of them an ethnic Korean, were arrested trying to send machine tools on an export-control list to Myanmar using a dummy company in Malaysia. The equipment could be used to develop either ballistic missiles or centrifuges for a uranium-enrichment program, according to weapons experts. And the U.N. in its May report said it was examining “suspicious” ties between Mr. Yun’s Namchongang Trading and Myanmar, possibly linked to these activities in Japan.
The Obama administration, in response, has announced a stepped-up campaign to block North Korea’s ability to raise funds through the arms trade. In addition to the new sanctions, the Pentagon has said it will intensify the interdiction of ships and planes believed to be carrying North Korean arms.
Still, Mr. Theis and other North Korea experts believe that it is only through dialogue that the West will be able to curb the North’s proliferation threat. Mr. Theis says he is recently lobbied the IAEA to allow him to return to Pyongyang to hold meetings with Mr. Yun. So far, he says, the IAEA hasn’t agreed.
Published: Aug. 31, 2010 at 12:07 PM
YANGON, Myanmar, Aug. 31 (UPI) — A message regarding a top military leader in Myanmar dismisses reports of a military shake-up ahead of a national vote, local newspapers claim.
Three state-run newspapers in Myanmar carried a message from “senior general” Than Shwe congratulating the Malaysian monarch on the country’s independence day.
“Senior Gen. Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, has sent a message of felicitations” to the monarchy, the BBC quoted the newspapers as saying.
Reports last week from outlets run by exiles from Myanmar, however, said the general was among many high-ranking military officials who stepped down to run in November elections.
The Irrawaddy Web site and the Democratic Voice of Burma Web site both reported the general and his deputy, Gen. Maung Aye, were among key military leaders who resigned to compete in the vote.
A constitution adopted recently in the country gives parliament the right to elect a new president. One-quarter of the seats are reserved for military officials.
Religious groups are barred from competing in the November elections, a move that prevents Buddhist monks who challenged the military authority from running.
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won in 1990 elections, has been under house arrest for most of the past two decades and can’t take part in the elections.
The military rulers never accepted the results of the 1990 vote.
The election is expected to be tightly controlled and carefully monitored by an elections commission appointed by military leaders.
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Aug 31, 2010 (IPS) – With its thick forest cover and abundant wildlife, the Dawna mountain range in south-eastern Burma is coming in the way of a flagship highway project being pushed by one of Asia’s premier financiers of roads.
The still-to-be-built 40-kilometre stretch to go across the mountain in military-ruled Burma is key to making the Asian Development Bank’s (AsDB) East-West Corridor a reality. It is part of the Manila-based bank’s 1,450-km long highway, billed to facilitate easier transport of goods and services across mainland South-east Asia.
The planned road will link the already completed 18-km road and a 200-km highway on either side of the mountain in that corner of Burma, also known as Myanmar. The AsDB’s blueprint seeks to connect the Burmese port city of Moulmein, on the Andaman Sea, with the Vietnamese city of Da Nang, on the coast of the South China Sea.
But this short distance of asphalt will test the bank’s commitment to keeping environmental and social costs to a minimum in the projects that are part of the economic integration agenda of its Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Programme.
“The area they have chosen to build the road is a part of the mountain with forests and wildlife,” said Naing Htoo, Burma project coordinator for Earthrights International, a U.S-based green lobby. “It will result in increasing logging of teak and killing wildlife.”
In addition, the ethnic Karen who live in the area where the road will run through feat that it would make it easier for more Burmese troops to come in to combat the Karen National Union, a rebel force that has been waging a separatist war for six decades.
“The Dawna mountain area has a KNU presence and bringing in Burmese troops will result in more militarisation and abuse,” Naing Htoo told IPS. “There are already signs of such violations, as land owned by locals close to the road’s route has been confiscated.”
For now, concerns that road construction will also result in rights violations such as forced labour, which the Burmese regime has been accused of, appears unfounded. “Since February 2007 some 430 (forced labour) complaints have been received from all over the country, however no complaints have been received alleging forced labour in respect to the East-West corridor highway project,” Steve Marshall, head of the International Labour Organisation’s Burma office, told IPS.
The AsDB is taking cover behind its non-involvement in providing direct funds to Burma to sidestep the questions that environmentalists and human rights activists are raising about the road across the Dawana range. The bank has stopped development funding in Burma for the past two decades due to the country’s financial and political troubles.
“ADB has not provided any direct assistance to Myanmar for over 20 years, and ADB has no plans to provide any new direct assistance to Myanmar,” said Pradeep Srivastava, a senior regional cooperation specialist at the bank, in an e- mail interview. “Since ADB does not operate in Mynamar, questions about the East-West Economic Corridor or other matters within the country can be best answered by officials in Myanmar.”
Likewise, any hint of a policy change by the bank to fund an infrastructure project in Burma would be met by opposition from the United States and the European Union (EU), which enjoy sufficient clout in the AsDB’s operations.
“Infrastructure development in a conflict area like the highway project is certain to be met by strong opposition from the U.S. government and many EU countries,” said Yuki Akimoto, co-director of the Tokyo-based Burma Information Network – Japan, which monitors the work of international financial institutions. “It may be difficult to abide by the ADB’s own environmental and social safeguard policies.”
“The Burma stretch is key to the realisation of the East- West Economic Corridor,” she said in an interview. “The ADB has been encouraging other entities to help build that stretch. As such, Thailand has been helping build part of the highway and Japan has been very keen on it, too.”
The bank’s GMS programme began in 1992 to promote economic growth in the six countries that share the Mekong River, South-east Asia’s largest body of water. These are Burma, Cambodia, China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
By 2005, over 10 billion U.S. dollars worth of investments had poured in to finance the building of roads, bridges, airports, seaports, power lines and hotels across this sub-region. Loans for the transport sector from the bank and other funders topped that amount, accounting for nearly half, or 4.8 billion U.S. dollars.
But projects such as the transport corridor will have “costs that go with the project,” said Avilash Roul, executive director of the NGO Forum on the ADB, a Manila- based watchdog of the bank. “Based on its studies, the ADB admits that the road project will increase the threat of communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, avian flu, human and wildlife trafficking, and degradation of environment and natural resources.”
“From the ground, local communities claim that they were not consulted about the project,” he explained in an interview, echoing a complaint that villagers in the Burma stretch of the transport corridor have made to activists.
“Local communities were never consulted when the first phase of the highway in Myamnar was being built and they have not been approached for the phase across the mountain,” said Naing Htoo. “Workers in rubber plantations and fruit farmers have lost their livelihoods.”
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
RANGOON — Family members of recently retired top military officers and government ministers in Burma have been collecting diamonds, gold jewelry and solid gold, according to business sources.
Diamond and gold traders in Rangoon said family members and relatives of those who have been recently removed from their top military posts and who will have to resign ministerial posts after the election, appear to be transforming their property into diamonds and gold.
“Ministers and generals don’t keep money in cash,” said a businessman in Rangoon. “They have converted it into strong and valuable items such as diamonds and gold. They don’t need to buy land and cars anymore because they already have as much they want. Those things are not as valuable and as movable as diamonds and gold that they can carry along with their families wherever they go.”
A number of jewelery dealers told The Irrawaddy that the generals’ family members did not come to the market to buy diamonds and gold, but instead send their close business associates and brokers to take care of it for them.
The current price of solid gold is 652,500 kyat [US $665] for one kyat-thar [approximately 0.015 kg].
A gold trader close to the regime’s top generals said gold bars and gold have been purchased in visses [one viss is approximately equivalent to one kilogram].
“It is really difficult to estimate the amount of gold they have,” said a gold trader. “For many years they have bought it, and they are still buying it.”
Family members of the generals are reportedly buying more diamonds than the ministers themselves.
“Diamonds are everyone’s fancy and can be worth millions or billions. Although it is small, it is a treasure that makes the possession stronger and more valuable. Families of top generals are particularly buying expensive diamonds,” said a diamond shop owner in Rangoon.
According to military sources in Naypyidaw, Snr-Gen Than Shwe is well known as the richest of the generals followed by the family of his deputy, Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye.
Ministers Aung Thaung of the Ministry of Industry No. 1 and Htay Oo of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation are said to be the wealthiest among government ministers.
Almost all the important positions in the army have recently been filled with a new generation of army officers. The state-run media has been silent on the reported resignations of top military officials in the Burmese leadership structure.
By BA KAUNG and LALIT K JHA – Tuesday, August 31, 2010
The US Administration announced on Tuesday that it will not accept Snr-Gen Than Shwe as the post-election civilian ruler of Burma if he resigns his post as head of the country’s armed forces but continues to wield power in a leadership role.
“A dictator in civilian clothing is still a dictator,” said US State Department Spokesman P J Crowley.
“The fact that they [the military leaders] are moving out of uniform but still constricting the political space within Burma is a problem for Burma,” Crowley told reporters at his daily news conference.
The US statement followed reports last week that 77-year-old Than Shwe had resigned his army position, together with other military personnel who plan to compete in the November election. Than Shwe remains effective head of the Burmese ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), while reportedly remaining a member of the armed forces.
According to a military memo obtained by The Irrawaddy on Monday, Lt-Gen Myint Aung, the army’s adjutant general, took over Than Shwe’s position as commander-in-chief while Lt-Gen Ko Ko, head of Chief of Bureau of Special Operation 3, who is said to be the nephew of Than Shwe’s wife, Kyaing Kyaing, becomes the deputy commander-in-chief, the post held until now by Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye.
It is widely believed that Than Shwe is now replacing all the top positions in the SPDC with his most trustworthy military officers. Observers believe that Than Shwe will take the role of the president as head of the state after the November 7, enabled to do so by the constitutional provision guaranteeing military personnel 25 percent of the parliamentary seats.
On Tuesday, in the first official report on Than Shwe since Friday’s reports that he had resigned his army post, he was described in the state-run media as Senior General and chairman of the SPDC. Than Shwe had sent a “message of felicitation” to a foreign head of state in that capacity, the reports said.
Burma’s election laws bar military personnel and civil servants from joining political parties contesting November’s election, resulting in several top officers exchanging their uniforms for civilian garb in order to become members of the regime proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
The new Burmese Constitution provides for a vital role still to be played by the army in Burma’s future political structure.
Vice-presidents would be nominated by the army and a majority of civilian representatives in the parliament, all of whom are likely be the elected candidates of the USDP. One of three vice-presidents who is required to be “acquainted with political, administrative, economic and military affairs” would be selected as president.
For now, Than Shwe’s future role remains a puzzle. But as a confirmation of a recent shake-up within the top leadership, state-run newspapers on Tuesday reported on a speech by the new commander of the Rangoon army command, Brig-Tun Than.
Commenting on developments on Tuesday, State Department Spokesman Crowley said: “Just taking the current political challenge and ‘civilianizing’ it is not the answer.
“Burma has to open up its political space, have a dialogue with ethnic groups within Burma that would allow for an effective and viable political opposition and have a real competition within civil society in Burma,” Crowley told reporters.
Despite the US stance, Burma’s neighbors, China, India and Southeast Asian governments are likely to accept regime officials as legitimate civilian rulers of Burma following the election.
Meanwhile, it is rumored that Than Shwe will visit China in September, just weeks after a trip to India.
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 20:23 Thomas Maung Shwe Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Critics of Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines say that a recent report in Burma’s state-controlled media that Chinese weapons firm Norinco is to spend nearly US$1 billion to develop the Monywa copper project’s long-stalled second phase is further evidence that the notorious weapons firm has bought Ivanhoe’s stake in Burma’s largest mining project – a charge the Vancouver-based miner has repeatedly denied.
The Myanmar Times, Burma’s state-controlled English-language business weekly reported on August 16 that Norinco, or China North Industries Corporation, would spend US$997 million to develop Monywa’s Letpadaung deposit. The untapped cache is about four miles (seven kilometres) southeast of the three other deposits that have been the focus of the Monywa mine’s operations in northwest Burma’s Sagaing Division.
The Monywa copper project is operated by the Myanmar Ivanhoe Copper Company (MICCL), a joint venture formed in the 1990’s between Ivanhoe Mines and state-controlled Mining Enterprise No. 1. In February 2007, Ivanhoe placed its 50 per cent stake in MICCL in a secretive independent blind trust in preparation for sale.
Mizzima reported this year that Ivanhoe’s independent trust sold its stake in MICCL late last year to Norinco and Chinese mining giant Chinalco in a deal that involved Burmese cronies closely connected to junta leader Than Shwe who acted as middlemen.
Ivanhoe Mines adamantly denied that the independent trust sold the firm’s stake, despite a Nornico statement in early June announcing that it had reached a deal with the Burmese regime for access to Monywa’s copper. Ivanhoe led by chairman Robert Friedland refused to disclose who controlled the trust or show any proof that the trust still controls Ivanhoe’s stake in MICCL.
Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) executive director Tin Maung Htoo said that news of Norinco spending nearly a billion dollars to develop the Monywa mine was yet more evidence that Ivanhoe’s stake was sold.
He said: “We’ve known for months that Norinco and Chinalco bought Ivanhoe’s stake in Monywa. Now that Burma’s state media is reporting that Norinco is going to spend a billion dollars to develop the Letpadaung deposit, we have yet more proof that the Chinese bought Ivanhoe’s stake in Monywa. But Ivanhoe will continue to deny this sale has happened because they don’t want to admit sanctions may have been violated by the involvement of blacklisted junta cronies in the deal.”
Tin Maung Htoo calls the Ivanhoe sale an “open secret”, citing a web posting in March last year that outlined the deal on Australian business news commentary website Business Spectator by a Glenn Ford, the same name as MICCL’s present general manger. The posting stated: “Now Chinalco, in partnership with Chinese state-owned arms dealer Norinco, is buying the whole copper deposit of Ivanhoe and the Myanmar government.”
Norinco, one of the Chinese military’s biggest suppliers, has long been the subject of intense western scrutiny for its activities. The Bush administration alleged that Norinco exported missile technology to Iran and took steps to penalise the firm in 2003 and 2005.
Did Nornico’s billion-dollar figure include the cost of purchasing the Ivanhoe stake?
In March 2003 Ivanhoe said the Letpadaung expansion was going to cost around US$315 million. Though this estimate appeared seven years ago and the US dollar has fallen in value, the US$997 million that Norinco will reportedly spend on Letpadaung is still a significant increase in the cost of the expansion.
Tin Maung Htoo believes he knows why the cost has increased. He told Mizzima: “We don’t know the whole story yet but I strongly suspect that the billion-dollar figure quoted by The Myanmar Times includes the money that Norinco had to spend to acquire at least partial ownership of what was Ivanhoe’s stake in MICCL.”
In October 2007, some six months after putting its MICCL stake in a blind trust, Ivanhoe claimed that it had determined it was “prudent to record a US$134.3 million write-down” in the value of their 50 per cent stake, thereby reducing its value to nothing.
Tin Maung Htoo said it was very plausible that the middlemen connected to Than Shwe, said to be involved in Norinco’s Monywa deal, first took possession of the stake from the blind trust and resold it to Norinco, giving themselves a handsome profit in the process.
“A massive windfall for Than Shwe and his cronies was the inevitable outcome of Ivanhoe’s clever ploy to write down the value of its stake in MICCL to nil; the cronies get the stake for free and then in turn resell it to the Chinese for hundreds of millions,” Tin Maung Htoo said.
He added that: “Now is the time for Canadian authorities to investigate Ivanhoe’s questionable departure from Burma and determine if the firm violated Canadian sanctions by its actions. I urge Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon to take action.”
Monywa and Nornico’s ‘arms-for-copper affair’
Burma’s respected opposition satellite broadcaster, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), reported at the end of June that sources said several weeks before Norinco announced it had signed a deal to get copper from Monywa, members of the Burmese regime visited China to “check on the shipments” of SH-1 155mm self-propelled howitzer cannons made by Norinco. The howitzer vehicles were then sent to Burma.
Jane’s Defence Weekly describes the SH-1 as a self-contained six-wheeled truck bearing the 155mm howitzer and a 12.7mm machine gun. It has a top road speed of 90km/h and the artillery piece has a maximum range of 33 miles (53 kilometres).
Analysts contacted by DVB speculated that the howitzers were exchanged for copper from Monywa. Tin Maung Htoo told Mizzima that he found the allegations over such exchanges credible, pointing out that Daewoo senior executives were convicted in a Korean court for helping the Burmese regime build a weapons factory as part of a deal to pave the way for Daewoo’s access to Burma’s offshore gas.
“The Norinco arms-for-copper deal is a win-win for China and Burma; the weapons maker gets cheap copper and the Burmese regime gets howitzers to use against its own people,” Tin Maung Htoo said. “Sadly, more innocent civilians will die because of this; we can thank Ivanhoe Mines and its chairman Robert Friedland for building one of ‘the lowest-cost copper mines in the world’ for the Burmese regime.”
Monywa’s Letpaduang expansion long-delayed
Despite the fact that every year since the Monywa mine came online in 1998 Ivanhoe repeatedly claimed that the undeveloped Letpadaung deposit had massive potential, the firm was unable to secure external funding for its expansion, which Ivanhoe had claimed could increase Monywa’s overall production by a massive 450 per cent.
An Ivanhoe press release from March 2003 quoted then deputy chairman Ed Flood as stating that “Letpadaung is widely recognised as one of the best undeveloped copper projects in the world”.
It said the “total measured and indicated resources at Letpadaung are 946 million tonnes grading 0.43 per cent copper, using a cut-off grade of 0.15 per cent copper”.
In the same release Ivanhoe claimed that the Australian consulting engineers Ausenco had devised a plan that would involve only the expansion’s “capital costs of US$315 million over six years, of which only US$40.9 million in external funding will be required”. The rest of the capital would come from funds generated by the mine’s existing operations.
Despite Ivanhoe’s optimistic forecasts the firm was unable to secure the funds or the approval of the Burmese regime to expand work at the Kysingtaung deposit and begin work at Letpadaung. Referring to both deposits Ivanhoe concluded in a March 2006 update to its shareholders that “without a substantial increase in mining capacity it is doubtful whether these two deposits can be economically developed”.
Representatives of Ivanhoe Mines could not be reached for comment.
Published: 31 August 2010
Trust has been built between the UN and the Burmese junta in the two years since cyclone Nargis, a UN representative said at a regional conference on Monday.
That sentiment however has been approached cautiously by the chief of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc, Surin Pitsuwan, who warned that if and when a natural disaster like Nargis strikes again, “we will go to the field together from the very beginning”.
The military generals who have ruled Burma in various guises for nearly half a century were roundly condemned for refusing offers of foreign aid in the wake of the cyclone on 2 May 2008, which killed some 140,000 people and left 2.4 million destitute.
Many of the deaths were attributed to the slow response by the government, as thousands became ill with water-borne diseases that were easily treatable by basic medicines.
But instead as the scale of the catastrophe, one of Asia’s worst recorded natural disasters, became apparent, the junta locked the country’s borders, barring aid workers and journalists from entering the cyclone-stricken Irrawaddy. Numbers of Burmese relief workers who helped bury the victims are now serving lengthy prison sentences.
Several weeks after the cyclone, the Burmese government finally acceded to requests to form a Tripartite Core Group (TCG) with the UN and ASEAN, but earlier this month officially bowed out and brought ongoing relief efforts under the sole jurisdiction of the military generals.
Surin said however that “Myanmar [Burma] has come to realise there is help out there” from the international community, but added that a lot of work still needed to be done by the generals to convince the world that it will cooperate, a contentious scenario given elections later this year that may well cement the status quo in Burma.
“If this…fails, then the world will certainly be very reluctant to continue to work and integrate Myanmar into the international community post-elections…So it is extremely critical, extremely important.”
By LARS BIRGEGARD
Published: 31 August 2010
Poverty in Burma is widespread and appalling. The failure or disinterest of the government to provide a policy framework conducive to development and to direct resources to other needs than security largely explains the hard conditions under which so many people in Burma live.
With support of different donors, UN Development Programme (UNDP) has gradually developed a major programme since 1993 attempting to address rural poverty. Presently this programme, the Human Development Initiative, reaches some 6,500 villages predominantly in border areas inhabited by ethnic minorities. This has been achieved in an extraordinarily hostile development policy and security context.
The complexity and difficulties in operating the programme have been further compounded by restrictions imposed by the UNDP Board on UNDP activities in Burma as a consequence of the US policy stand on the country and its influence in UNDP. Hence, in executing the HDI, UNDP has not been permitted to cooperate with government institutions or channel any funds through such institutions. For instance, it has not been possible to cooperate with the government structures at local level in the fields of agriculture, health, education, and so on, in order to coordinate activities and draw upon their technical staff resources. Therefore, UNDP has been forced to develop what has become a gigantic NGO-type organization. This arrangement has both reduced implementation capacity and undermined the prospects for sustainability of services delivered and benefits.
As the conditions under which the HDI is implemented by necessity reduce the prospects for impact and sustainability of achievements, expectations should be adjusted accordingly. A further consideration is that whatever impact achieved is of great importance given the deplorable living conditions of millions and millions in Burma.
The UNDP Board requires that an Independent Assessment Mission annually determines whether the UNDP Country Office implements the HDI within the mandate given to it by the Board. It is the Mission report for 2010 which is the basis for the article UN aid has ‘limited impact’ in Burma in DVB on 25 August. This Mission concludes that two of the three main projects in the HDI have had limited impact on poverty, as elaborated in the DVB article. This conclusion is based on impact evaluations undertaken by the programme itself.
However, the Mission does not find the entire programme deficient. It gives unreserved credit to the micro-finance project, which is the third main project in the programme. This project is outstanding and counts among the 20 most successful large micro-finance projects in the world. It proves that properly designed and well managed significant development gains for the benefit of poor people can be made also in Burma. Furthermore, the two remaining (small) projects in HDI – the HIV/AIDS project and the Household Survey project – are also found to be satisfactory.
The Mission expresses concern about two main projects in HDI and argues that the primary reason for their limited impact is to be found in the design. The Mission points out what it considers to be the design flaws. Doing so begs an answer to the question of what a modified design with better prospects for a greater impact could be. The Mission provided a tentative proposal on principles and a strategic approach for a revised design. However, given the terms of reference for the Mission and instructions from UNDP New York, this discussion is not included in the report, which is now made public, but in a separate report submitted to the UNDP-Myanmar Country Office. This may leave the unfortunate impression to the readers of the official report that provision of development support for poverty alleviation in Burma, at least through UNDP, is unsuccessful and has no prospects.
End of story.
This is factually incorrect and not the conclusion of the Mission. Firstly, one of the three main projects in the programme, the micro-finance project, is a resounding success and two smaller projects are satisfactory as already noted. Secondly, the Mission is firmly of the opinion that modifications of the design of the two less successful main projects can significantly enhance impact on poverty. This opinion is not mere speculations; it is evidenced by concrete suggestions based on experience. The fact that the report containing this discussion is not made public prevents any further elaboration here.
The current programme comes to an end in 2011. This provides a golden opportunity for UNDP to elaborate a revised programme building on the viable elements of the present programme. The prospects for something better is clearly within reach. The potential of this programme is unique in Burma given its outreach and coverage. The staggering levels of poverty strongly call for attention. There is no reason and justification for “donor fatigue”. However, there are reasons for reflection and reconsideration.
Lars Birgegard is team leader of the UNDP’s 2010 Independent Assessment Mission of the Human Development Initiative in Burma. He writes this piece partly in response to UN aid has ‘limited impact’ in Burma, published in DVB on 25 August.