Reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council was split on Thursday over how to push Myanmar to improve human rights and adopt democratic reforms as a U.N. special envoy prepared for a key visit to the Asian nation.

After focusing on aid efforts in Myanmar since a May 2 cyclone left 138,000 dead or missing, the 15-member Security Council turned its attention back to pressuring the country’s secretive military government on political reforms.

The United States said it wanted “concrete results” from next month’s visit to Myanmar by Ihbrahim Gambari, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy, and that “tougher measures” may be needed if that was not achieved.

“My message to the regime is to take advantage of Mr. Gambari’s visit, turn a new page … or face more pressure — the choice is theirs in this regard,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters.

He said for Gambari’s visit to be a success, Myanmar had to cooperate on a political roadmap, agree to time-bound talks on political transition ahead of 2010 elections, and release political prisoners including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador John Sawers said the Security Council needed to remain focused on the political problems of Myanmar, but acknowledged that reaching an agreement among members on how much pressure to apply would be difficult.

“We’re in a very difficult position in the sense that the Burmese government have not responded to the demands of the international community,” he told reporters. “Things have gone backwards in Burma over the last six months or so.”

But China’s U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said there was no need for council action and urged patience on Myanmar, while Vietnam’s U.N. Ambassador Le Luong Minh said the country’s problems were comprehensive so “any solution should be comprehensive.”

Ban met on Wednesday with the so-called friends of Myanmar group — India, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, the five permanent members of the Security Council, and others — to discuss Gambari’s visit.

He said in a statement that the group made it clear Gambari’s visit “would need to yield tangible progress on the issues of concern to the international community.”

Gambari has said his most recent visit to Myanmar was a disappointment and yielded no concrete results. One of the problems was that he was unable to meet senior junta leaders.

It was his third visit since authorities crushed pro-democracy marches in September in a crackdown that sparked worldwide outrage and a major diplomatic push for political reform in the former British colony, which has been under military rule since 1962.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also urged the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations on Wednesday to put more pressure on Myanmar. ASEAN’s members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A resolution was introduced in the US House of Representatives asking China to end human rights abuses and its support for tainted governments in Sudan and Myanmar in line with “Olympic traditions of freedom and openness”.

The resolution, proposed Wednesday by the Democratic head of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, Howard Berman, is to be discussed and possibly voted on Thursday before it is sent to the House floor.

It called on Beijing “to immediately end abuses of the human rights of its citizens, to cease repression of Tibetan and Uighur citizens, and to end its support for the governments of Sudan and Burma (Myanmar).”

This, it added, was “to ensure that the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games take place in an atmosphere that honors the Olympic traditions of freedom and openness.”

The 12-point resolution also called on President George W. Bush, who is to attend the games opening ceremony, to make a “strong public statement” in Beijing on China’s human rights situation and meet with families of jailed “prisoners of conscience.”

Bush was also asked to seek to visit the troubled Tibet and Xinjiang regions while in China to attend the games.

The resolution also sought direct talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader.

Hopes that Beijing would polish up its human rights record in the run up to the games have been “short-lived,” Berman said during a House hearing Wednesday entitled “China on the Eve of the Olympics.”

Reporters Without Borders announced in its annual report on China that in 2007 the government “did everything possible to prevent the liberal press, Internet users and dissidents from expressing themselves.”

A recent poll by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China found that 67 percent of foreign journalists felt China was not keeping its promise to allow freedom of reporting, Berman said.

He also cited China’s deadly crackdown on protests in Tibet in March and the arrest in December of Hu Jia, a leading fighter for human rights, health care and the environment.

Beijing’s support for Robert Mugabe’s hardline regime in Zimbabwe was also raised, especially its veto of a UN Security Council resolution that would have imposed an arms embargo on Zimbabwe and travel and financial restrictions on the leader and other senior officials.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican member in the House foreign affairs panel, said Beijing had ahead of the Olympics “intensified its brutal crackdown on political dissidents and activists.

“One would wish that the motto of this year’s Olympics, ‘one world, one dream,’ could ring true,” she said. “Unfortunately, when it comes to the pursuit of democratic values and human rights, we remain a world divided with a dream unfulfilled.”

Ros-Lehtinen also claimed Beijing had initiated “broad and sweeping measures to silence internal criticism,” allegedly detaining hundreds of practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual sect and members of other organized movements.

“The number of reported raids and summary executions continues to rise, and the regime has even taken violent measures to discourage North Korean refugees from seeking asylum in China,” she said.

Rice attended a ministerial gathering Wednesday of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which spent considerable time on Myanmar, which is under US and EU sanctions over its human rights record.

“The ASEAN charter aspires to rule of law, human rights, development of more pluralistic political systems, integration into the international community of states and Burma is out of step, badly out of step,” she said.

The regional grouping pursues a controversial policy of “constructive engagement” with Myanmar, a military-run nation formerly known as Burma.

The junta was severely criticised for its delay in allowing foreign aid into the country after a May 2-3 cyclone left 138,000 people dead or missing.

It belatedly allowed aid workers to enter under an arrangement forged with ASEAN and the United Nations.

“You wonder how can the international community stand by and allow that to happen,” Rice said.

“I give a lot of credit to ASEAN for developing the mechanism for assistance and for speeding up assistance after a period of time and becoming a kind of an international clearinghouse, if you will, for contact with Burma,” she said.

“That was a useful role, but it should never have happened in the first place,” Rice said.

“Now the question is, given the slight opening that this has provided, is there a way to move Burma to a political track that would finally make something of what is right now a kind of mockery, which is this ‘roadmap to democracy’ which is going nowhere,” Rice said.

“Would it be possible for regional states and neighbors to press the regime to release Aung San Suu Kyi, to allow real opposition, to get on a path?” she said.

Democracy leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the past 18 years since her party won a 1990 election which the generals have never recognised.

Ministers repeated a call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees, while urging the junta to engage with her movement, which has been shut out of the much-criticised “roadmap to democracy.”

While the ASEAN foreign ministers expressed “deep disappointment” over Aung San Suu Kyi’s continued detention on Sunday night, those words were removed in a final communique issued after formal talks the following day.

Tin Tin Latt is among thousands of widows of fishermen in Myanmar’s cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy delta who have been forced to become breadwinners without land to farm or the means to earn money from the sea.

Cyclone Nargis, which struck in early May, killed 84,500 people and left 54,000 missing, according to the ruling junta, in the worst natural disaster in Myanmar’s modern history and the world’s fifth deadliest in the past 40 years. Of the dead, 27,000 were fishermen, the regime says, although aid workers believe the actual number is far higher.

The U.N. food agency says more than 100,000 fishermen have been affected and some 50,000 acres of fish ponds destroyed.

The storm also destroyed boats, nets, jetties and processing plants, crippling a top export revenue earner in one of the world’s poorest nations. Last year, Myanmar exported some 350,000 tons of seafood to European and Asian countries, much of it from the vast delta with its long coastline and spider web of rivers.

The Myanmar government says it plans to build more than 9,000 boats and provide fishing nets to speed revival of the industry.

“We have started distribution to help those fishermen to regain their livelihoods,” said Saw Lah Paw Wah, assistant director of Myanmar’s Fisheries Department.

But even if those tools eventually make their way to fishing families, many no longer have the hands to do the job.

“In fishing families, there is a tendency for the men to be the providers. In the event that fishermen are killed, their families are in a far more difficult position than farming families,” said Steve Marshall, the U.N. International Labor Organization representative in Myanmar.

This leaves families like Tin Tin Latt’s with a great burden and an uncertain future. Some will have to wait until their surviving children grow up before they can take up their traditional occupation.

“I am afraid my only son will become a fisherman his whole life, following my husband,” said the 33-year-old widow. “I don’t want him to be killed by a storm like his father.”

The destruction wrought by Nargis also destroyed many jobs in the fishing industry.

Marshall’s organization and other agencies plan a 12-month project to offer 25,000 delta people jobs building a transport system linking jetties, markets and farms.

But agencies say they lack the funds to cover everyone affected. Two of Tin Tin Latt’s three surviving children are under the age of 3, and it’s hard to find work for women that generates money while leaving time to care for children, aid workers say.

More than 2 1/2 months after the cyclone struck, Tin Tin Latt’s family depends on meager rice handouts from a local aid organization, and her husband’s fishing nets lie empty. Rice and fish form the bulk of diets in Myanmar.

The situation for her and thousands of others in the delta still hangs in the balance, although villagers are quickly rebuilding their simple shacks and international aid workers, once barred from the region, offer additional assistance.

In the first full assessment of the disaster, the U.N., Myanmar government and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, this week warned of a second emergency unless $1 billion is forthcoming over the next three years from international donors.

It said 450,000 homes were destroyed, while 4,000 schools and 75 percent of health facilities were damaged.

“The worst of the crisis is over but we are still in a state of emergency. People live in a very precarious condition now. If we fail to sustain the recovery efforts, they may face a second emergency,” said Puji Pujiono, a member of the ASEAN assessment team, citing shelter, water, sanitation and food as key priorities.

The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization has appealed for $33.5 million, saying 75 percent of farmers in the country’s main food-producing region lack sufficient seed, with little time left before the end of the planting season in August.

The Rome-based agency says more than 50,000 small-scale farming households and 99,000 landless rural households need immediate help.

When interviewed, Tin Tin Latt said she had only enough rice for six days and didn’t know if her children would have anything to eat after that. Although afraid, she said she had no choice but to send her 15-year-old son to learn how to handle a boat at sea.

“I wish I could move deeper inland, and find a new way to raise my kids rather than let my son become a fisherman,” she said as she dissolved into tears. “Every morning, when he goes aboard the boat, I pray for him not to be taken away as happened to my beloved husband.”

Reuters

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council will hold a special meeting on a border dispute between Cambodia and Thailand that has sparked fears of a military clash, France and Vietnam said on Wednesday.

French Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Maurice Ripert told reporters the council discussed a request by Cambodia to take up the issue, adding that council members would likely decide on Thursday on the date and format for the meeting.

“We are worried about the situation and the potential tension,” said Ripert, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency until the end of the year.

“The Security Council should take its responsibility,” he said. “We are in charge of peace and security, so if we can defuse the tension … we will do it and we think we have to do it.”

At the heart of the dispute is a 1.8-square-mile (4.6-square-km) area around the Preah Vihear temple on a jungle-clad escarpment on the Thai-Cambodian border, which forms a natural boundary and is claimed by both nations.

Ripert said the 15 council members would continue to support bilateral and regional efforts to defuse the crisis, including mediation by the Association of South East Asian Nations, if possible.

On Tuesday, ASEAN foreign ministers discussed the issue at a meeting in Singapore but failed to reach a consensus on whether the organization should get involved.

Vietnamese Ambassador Le Luong Minh, president of the Security Council this month, told reporters it was possible the special meeting would take place next week.

Ripert said it was important for the council to meet as soon as possible.

It was not clear what the council would do. One Western diplomat said some wanted the council to adopt a legally binding resolution urging the parties to resolve the dispute, while others thought a nonbinding statement would suffice.

A buildup of troops and heavy artillery on both sides of the border has worried neighboring countries and the United Nations, to which Cambodia has appealed for help.

While there have been no major incidents at the temple so far, Thai border villages that are home to some 4,000 people are braced for a possible conflict.

Analysts say Thai politics bear much of the blame for the dispute over the temple, which an international court awarded to Cambodia in 1962. The ruling still rankles many Thais.

Preah Vihear’s listing as a World Heritage site this month inspired pride and joy in Cambodia, but triggered political uproar in Thailand.

Bangkok’s initial support for the heritage listing has been used by anti-government groups to stoke nationalist passions in Thailand and fuel street protests against Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej.

(Additional reporting by Sukree Sukplang in Thailand; Editing by Peter Cooney)

[Lord Patten is a former Governor of Hong Kong and European Commissioner for External Affairs. He is currently Chancellor of Oxford University and Co-Chair of the International Crisis Group.]

Maybe it is time to be a bit more generous to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and look at the outcome of what he does rather than the way that he does it.

The original launch of the Mediterranean Union almost sank the whole enterprise. Appearing to speak without giving the issue much thought, Sarkozy initially proposed a club of European and mostly Arab states along the Mediterranean’s shore. It would have been in essence a French-run enterprise that the rest of Europe would have paid for. This did not go down well, particularly with the Germans.

There was also a strong suspicion that the French were trying to find a way to buy off Turkey with a relationship falling well short of European Union membership.

So the auguries for an attempt to revitalize Europe’s relationship with its Mediterranean partners were not good. But by the time of the grand Paris Summit in July to send the new club on its way, the initial suspicions had largely been overcome. Sarkozy bowed to his European critics and enjoyed a diplomatic triumph. We shall soon see whether there is substance to the initiative, or whether it is just a coat of fresh paint on an old and tired idea.

The original Barcelona Process, launched in 1995, was an excellent scheme. Intended to provide an economic and political backdrop to peace-making through confidence-building in the Middle East, it was an admirable recognition of Europe’s historical, commercial, cultural, and political ties with its neighbors to the south of the sea which has brought us all together over the years.

There were aspirations for a free-trade area by 2010. There were pledges of political integration based on shared values. There were people-to-people links. There was a forum where Israelis and their long-term Arab foes could sit together and discuss other matters than the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. There was a development budget. And there were meetings. So many meetings.

The effort was far from worthless. Development projects were funded through grants or cheap loans, and these have probably played at least some part in increasing the attractiveness of the Maghreb and the Mashraq to foreign investors. There was some lowering of agricultural and other tariffs by the EU. Dialogue on political reform, and euros to support it, helped further the process in some countries, notably Morocco and Jordan. There was some co-operation on common problems like drugs and illegal immigration.

But, as a significant component of Europe’s policy toward its most crucial neighbors, the successes of the Barcelona Process were modest: a great idea on the launch pad had difficulty getting off the ground.

So Sarkozy deserves at least two and a half cheers for trying to revitalize it. But if the Mediterranean Union is to achieve more than was managed in its first manifestation, a number of things will need to happen.

First, Europe is better at talking about free-trade areas than delivering free trade. For example, there are still too many barriers to agricultural trade between the North and the South. And guess which country leads the opposition to any significant opening up of European agriculture. Step forward, France, and take a bow.

Second, however slow we have been in opening up a real Mediterranean market, the barriers to freer trade between Arab League countries are just as great.

Third, it was excellent that in Paris Sarkozy began the process of bringing Syria in out of the diplomatic cold. We must also hope that his attempts to act as a peace-broker between West Bank Palestinians and Israel are blessed with success.

But the truth is that Europe, for all the gallant efforts of Javier Solana, has been absent from serious politics in the Middle East. We have not dared to cross America. A largely non-existent European policy toward the region has been dictated by the absentee monopolists of policy in Washington.

Europe should get more seriously involved, even at the risk of occasionally irritating America, which may be less likely to happen once the Bush administration is history. For a start, we should recognize that there will be no political settlement in Palestine without including Hamas. What would incredibly have been former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s first visit to Gaza in his first year of peace-making had to be canceled recently because of security concerns. Enough said.

Finally, Europe has to decide how serious it is about all the admirable stuff in the Barcelona Process on pluralism, civil society, the rule of law, and democracy.

Is Europe serious that a shared concept of human rights should be one of the foundations of our Mediterranean partnership? If so, what are we in Europe proposing to do about it? If this is just blah-blah, better not say it. We discredit ourselves and important principles when we say things that we do not mean.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008. 
www.project-syndicate.org