By Larry Jagan
RANGOON, Apr 17 2003 (IPS)

For months now Burma’s military leaders have refused to start concrete political talks with the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, prompting her to say in an exclusive interview: ”We have a saying – it’s very, very difficult to wake somebody up who is pretending to be asleep.”

Though they have been in secret contact with her for more than two years – and released her from house arrest in May 2002 – the generals have resisted growing international pressure to implement political reform.

Repeated visits by U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail, who brokered the original dialogue between the two sides, have not been able to break the deadlock. Over the past 10 months, few journalists have been allowed into Burma to see the situation for themselves.

But in an interview with IPS at the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) headquarters here in Rangoon, she said: ”If somebody is really asleep it’s easier to wake them up.”

”Sometimes I cannot but wonder if they are pretending not to understand what we have been saying all along: that we have genuine goodwill towards the Burmese military. I personally look upon it with a certain amount of affection because of my father (Gen Aung San) and I want it to have an honourable position in the country.”

For months now there has been no movement in Burma’s fragile dialogue process – between the military junta and the opposition leader, Suu Kyi. And the prospect of the U.N.-sponsored process resolving Burma’s political deadlock is rapidly dwindling away.

Hopes are now being pinned on the forthcoming visit of Razali Ismail, who has been pressing the regime to allow him to return to Rangoon to restart the stalled talks.

Hopes were raised a year ago that a new era of serious political talks were about to start when Razali convinced the military regime to release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. But the expected direct negotiations between the two sides on Burma’s political future never got underway.

That public expectation and renewed optimism have given way over the last 12 months to frustration and impatience. ”We are doomed to poverty and repression,” said Win Tin, who runs a market stall here.

Most people clearly see the country’s top generals, especially senior Gen Than Shwe, as as the ones to blame for the current failure of the dialogue process, but some also feel that Aung San Suu Kyi is also at fault. ”Daw Suu has let us down,” said a young woman in Rangoon who did not want to be identified, ”she hasn’t really told us what to do to make change happen”.

But the dialogue process has produced some results.

The secret talks have led to the release of political prisoners. Some 600 political prisoners have been released since the dialogue process started more than two years ago.

International human rights groups estimate that there are still more than 1,200 political prisoners in Burma’s jails. In the past five months, only a handful of political activists have been freed. ”The lack of releases is directly tied to the state of the dialogue process,” said the U.N. rapporteur on human rights in Burma, Professor Paulo Pinheiro.

Burma’s defends its policy by citing security concerns. ”In order to maintain security, we have to be very careful in how we release certain prisoners, ” the government spokesman, Col Hla Min, said in an exclusive interview.

”But that does not mean that we won’t release any more. We will. But we also have to make sure that the country’s security and peace is maintained, so we have to do it gradually. Once we are confident that security and stability will not be disturbed, then we can go on releasing prisoners”.

The current failure of the dialogue process is making many countries in the West, particularly the United States and Europe, consider adopting tougher sanctions, to force the generals to keep their promises to introduce political reform. This is something Burma’s leaders reject.

”There should be no question whatever about our commitment towards this process of national reconciliation,” said Burma’s deputy foreign minister Khin Maung Win. ”The reconciliation process is very important. We are in a process of transition to a democratic system because we want our country to be developed and modernised.”

But despite the constant insistence on the part of Burma’s military leaders that they are committed to the dialogue process, the reality suggests otherwise.

Since Aung San Suu Kyi was released in May last year, there has been little effort by Burma’s top generals to talk to the opposition leader. ”I see it very simply,” said Aung San Suu Kyi, ”the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council, as the military government is called) is just not ready to talk. We’ve been trying to get the to the negotiating table for fourteen years but they have never been keen on the idea”.

Since her release from house arrest, the opposition leader has been trying to coax the regime into starting serious political talks with her and the NLD – offering to cooperate with the army on various matters, including some involving international humanitarian assistance.

”We have tried to make it very clear to the SPDC, we do not want to be the enemy,” said Aung San Suu Kyi. ”We do not want to look upon them as the enemy.”

”We are in opposition to each other at the moment but we should work together for the sake of the country and we certainly bear no grudges against them. We are not out for vengeance. We want to reach the kind of settlement which will be beneficial to everybody, including the members of the military,” she added.

But even these repeated appeals have fallen on deaf ears. ”The top generals just cannot bring themselves to meet Aung San Suu Kyi personally and prefer to delay the day when the army has to acknowledge she has a crucial and central role in Burma’s political future,” said a senior Western diplomat in Rangoon.

In the meantime, U.N. officials are trying to arrange Razali Ismail’s next trip to Burma So far, the military authorities have tried to deflect the requests to schedule the visit for as soon as possible. They rejected the requests in February by saying the government was ”too focused on the country’s financial problems to think about anything else at the moment”.

More recently they have simply told the United Nations that it was not possible to receive the envoy at the moment without giving any concrete reasons. In fact, the military regime has virtually told the envoy to stop contacting them and they would be in touch when they were ready, according to diplomats in Rangoon.

U.N. sources believe this reflects the top general’s wish to avoid having to explain why he and his government have not had any contact with the opposition leader for more than four months, or met any of their promises to Razali when he was last in Rangoon.

”Mr Razali doesn’t expect to return to Rangoon before the end of April at the earliest,” according to a senior U.N. sources, ”and he may not be able to visit before June the way things are going”.

In the meantime, the regime seems more committed to finding ways of delaying talking to Aung San Suu Kyi and dragging the dialogue process out indefinitely.

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