POLITICS-BURMA: U.N. Envoy Blocked as Dialogue Becomes War of Words

By Larry Jagan Reprint | | Print |

Larry Jagan

BANGKOK, Apr 28 2003 (IPS) - U.N. envoy Razali Ismail is increasingly frustrated by the Burmese government’s failure to allow him to return to Rangoon to try to kickstart the country’s fragile dialogue process.

"I am perplexed and disappointed," he said during his visit to Bangkok earlier this week. "I thought I was a good friend to all parties so I really cannot understand why I’m being denied access."

Over the past three months, Razali has been trying repeatedly to visit Rangoon, but all his requests have been rebuffed by the military junta. U.N. officials say the military authorities simply say it is not convenient to receive the envoy and have continuously invented a stream of excuses to delay the visit.

Razali is clearly getting impatient, since it has been six months since his last trip. He has visited Burma every three months or so since he was appointed U.N. envoy to facilitate discussions between the military junta and the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Publicly, Razali continues to put on an optimistic face. "I hope to visit as soon as possible,” he told reporters in Bangkok. But it now seems certain that he will not be able to visit Rangoon before the beginning of June at the earliest.

U.N. officials insist that Razali only needs two days’ notice to travel to Rangoon, and that all it takes is a call from the military authorities.

In the past few weeks, many political leaders and senior diplomats have urged Burma’s top leader Senior Gen Than Shwe to allow Razali to visit Rangoon as soon as possible. U.N. human rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro has told Rangoon that they must allow Razali to visit immediately if they are serious about national reconciliation.

The European Union has also stressed the need for Razali to be given access to Burma. The Japanese prime minister’s envoy – the former prime minister Yomuri Mori – delivered a personal letter from Junichiro Koizumi to Gen Than Shwe this week, urging the Burmese leader to implement economic reform and to allow Razali in as soon as possible.

But none of these interventions seems to have had much impact. U.N. officials say U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan may have to intervene now.

"The failure to allow Ambassador Razali to visit Burma clearly reflects the fact that the dialogue process has stalled," Pinheiro said in Bangkok.

Now the stalled dialogue process may even be about to unravel. The opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has just gone on the offensive accusing the Burmese generals of insincerity and lack of commitment to political reform.

"I have come to the conclusion that the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council, as the junta as formally called) is not interested in national reconciliation," she told reporters in Rangoon last week. "National reconciliation is change. They don’t want change, but change is inevitable."

It was the opposition leader’s harshest public criticism of the military regime since her release from house arrest a year ago on May 6. Since then, there has been little progress in the dialogue process. There has been no real meeting or contact between the two sides for nearly six months now.

The opposition leader blames the military for the failure. In fact, she told journalists that the situation has actually deteriorated in the past few months. During her last three trips out of Rangoon – to Shan, Rakhine and Chin states – her entourage and the party supporters who came to greet her were harassed and intimidated.

Burma’s military spokesman reacted strongly to the opposition leader’s accusations and blamed Aung San Suu Kyi and her party for the problems. According to Col Hla Min, it is her National League for Democracy that is uncooperative, "by focusing on the negative aspects of the trips and holding press conferences attacking the government for these shortcomings”.

"On her first trips outside of Rangoon last year, the authorities helped facilitate visits to government projects and appreciated the constructive comments and suggestions they received from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi afterwards," said Col Hla Min.

The opposition leader met with her assigned military intelligence liaison officer, Brig Gen Than Thun, and passed on her impressions of the projects, according to government sources. "This has ceased to happen," said the spokesman, "and the government would welcome the NLD’s constructive comments and suggestions”.

Both the opposition leader and senior military officials say the two sides should cooperate on humanitarian and development issues like HIV/AIDS, health and education.

"They (the generals) have shown that they are willing to cooperate with us in matters of humanitarian aid," Aung San Suu Kyi told a press conference in Rangoon last week. "The government actively welcomes meaningful and constructive help in all areas of national development – particularly in education, health care and economic development," said Col Hla Min in a recent statement to the international press.

Burma’s fragile political dialogue process is slowly slipping into a confrontation that is being waged in the media. "It’s becoming a war of words," said a senior western diplomat in Rangoon who did not want to be identified.

The fear is that this could quickly destroy any trust that has been built up between the two sides over the past two years during of the dialogue process.

"The dialogue now seems to be with the media, and not the diplomats," said Razali. "This exchange should not be in the public domain but behind closed doors.”

The only way that can happen is for Razali to be allowed back into Burma, according to U.N. officials. "The political deadlock can only be resolved if the two parties sit down together and talk and that is exactly the role Mr Razali is meant to play," said a U.N. official.