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ASEAN foreign ministers urge tougher action against Myanmar

#ASEAN #foreign #ministers #urge #tougher #action #Myanmar

Malaysia will lead a push for tougher action on Myanmar when a regional bloc of foreign ministers meets this week amid growing anger at the junta for blocking efforts to resolve the crisis.

The ten-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has led unsuccessful diplomatic efforts to restore peace, last week condemned the junta’s execution of four prisoners.

Myanmar has been in chaos since a coup last February and the death toll from the military’s crackdown on dissidents has surpassed 2,100, according to a local watchdog.

Ministers meeting in Phnom Penh from Wednesday are expected to lament the lack of progress on ASEAN’s “five-point consensus” plan, agreed last April, calling for an immediate end to the violence and the Call for dialogue between the junta and the coup opponents.

Ministers not only express “deep concern” about recent developments and call for restraint, but also call for “concrete measures to effectively and fully implement the five-point consensus,” according to a draft communique seen by AFP.

After the plan has stalled for more than a year, Malaysia will come up with a framework for its implementation, even as critics deride ASEAN as a toothless figure of speech.

“The key element of the framework is that there has to be an endgame. They must have an endgame. What is the endgame of the five-point consensus?” Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told AFP.

– ‘make a mockery’ –

Frustration is mounting within the bloc after Myanmar’s junta carried out its first executions in decades, despite personal pleas from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Among the four executed were Phyo Zeya Thaw, a rapper-turned-legislator for ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, and veteran political activist Kyaw Min Yu – better known as “Jimmy”.

“It shows that the junta is mocking the (consensus plan),” Saifuddin wrote in a newspaper article over the weekend.

Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan called the executions a “serious setback” to ASEAN’s efforts to resolve the crisis, while Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanee Sangrat said the move “adds to Burma’s galling problems”.

A senior ASEAN diplomat told AFP he does not expect any country to go so far as to call for Myanmar’s expulsion from the bloc.

But some members, led by Malaysia and the Philippines, want to ban the military regime from sending ministers to all ASEAN meetings – including the November summit – until there is progress on the five-point plan.

“Political officials from the administration, especially the military administration, are not welcome,” said Daniel Espiritu, the Philippines’ deputy foreign minister for ASEAN affairs.

Myanmar’s top diplomat Wunna Maung Lwin was not invited to Phnom Penh and was also barred from a foreign ministers’ retreat in February, while junta leader Min Aung Hlaing was snubbed at a leaders’ summit last year.

“Even North Korea is welcome at this forum, but the Myanmar junta is not… it needs to recognize how isolated Myanmar itself is in its neighborhood,” said Aaron Connelly, Southeast Asia specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

– Maritime Series –

In addition to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea will be another hot topic on the agenda.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will fly in, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov are also expected to attend and hold meetings with ASEAN ministers.

But analysts are expecting no repeat of 2012, when Cambodia – a key Beijing ally – last hosted ASEAN and was accused of siding with China on the disputed sea, resulting in no communiqué being issued.

“Cambodia has learned its lesson. It was the first time ASEAN failed to issue a joint statement, and Cambodia got a major setback from it,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, an analyst at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University.

“Hun Sen… doesn’t want to shoot himself in the foot again.”

China claims most of the sea – with competing territorial claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

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