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Myanmar demands right to sit at ASEAN-EU meeting with ASEAN-Econmoy |
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October 7, 2000
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, OCT 6 (AP) - Myanmar said Friday it has a right to sit at an upcoming conference between Southeast Asian and European foreign ministers, which has been thrown into doubt by a clampdown in Myanmar against pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations which admitted Myanmar in 1997 had made it clear that all its ten members must be allowed to join any dialogue with the European Union, said David Abel, a top Myanmar official. "If it's EU-ASEAN, why should Myanmar be left out?" Abel told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual meeting of ASEAN economic ministers. "There should be no discrimination," said Abel, who is a minister to the office of the chief of Myanmar's ruling junta. On Thursday, European Union's trade commissioner, Pascale Lamy, told reporters in Bangkok that it was too early to say whether the meeting due to take place in Vientiane, Laos, in December would go ahead, amid EU concerns about the situation in Myanmar. "If they (the EU) are not going to come to Vientiane, it's up to them," Abel said. Suu Kyi, whose party won general elections in Myanmar in 1990 but was never allowed to take power, has been kept under virtual house arrest since Sept. 22 after she made her second bid in a month to travel outside the Yangon on party business. Dozens of supporters of her National League for Democracy have been rounded up. NLD vice chairman Tin Oo is being detained at a state guest house and other party leaders are confined to their homes without diplomatic contact. These developments have drawn a barrage of international criticism and again led to a hardening of opinions in the EU, which had recently said it didn't want the Myanmar issue to hold relations with ASEAN "hostage." Abel claimed Suu Kyi was already free to leave her house, but had to have a "tangible reason" for leaving Yangon, the capital. He accused Suu Kyi of being provocative in her conduct with the military regime and in the past threatening "utter devastation" in Myanmar, also known as Burma, unless it gave up power. Dismissing accounts of widespread poverty and a moribund economy in Myanmar, Abel said that per capita income had grown by 2,700 percent since the current military regime took power after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1988. "There is no poverty, no starvation, but people might not have the good things," he said. Abel added there was no unemployment and near universal provision of health care and education. Abel said the gross domestic product growth during in the fiscal year to March 2000 had been 10.9 percent and GDP would grow by not less than this in the current year. He acknowledged that a deputy minister for national planning and economic development was sacked recently after criticizing economic policy and saying official estimates of growth were exaggerated. But the official had been "new to the job" and inexperienced in economic analysis, he said. |