When all else fails, try engaging Myanmar junta
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - The seven-year-long stalemate between the Myanmar military regime and the country's democratic opposition plus Western supporters needs to be reassessed and a pragmatic new approach undertaken, however distasteful - conditional engagement with the junta, according to an international conflict-resolution group.

What is needed is flexibility, nimble and creative diplomatic moves, carrots and sticks to encourage the government to reform - and agreement to gradually withdraw sanctions as the government makes visible progress on political and constitutional reform. The sine qua non for all of this is the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and genuine dialogue with her pro-democracy movement.

In a report released on Monday, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) concludes that neither seven years of United States and other Western sanctions against the government, nor the more supportive policies, such as the Bangkok Process, pursued by Myanmar's Southeast Asian neighbors, have brought about any major change in the country's domestic political situation.

The report, "Myanmar: Sanctions, Engagement or Another Way Forward?", calls instead for a new approach that might begin a process of reform in Myanmar, provided certain preconditions are met. These include the regime's unconditional release from custody of 1990 Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the launch of a "serious dialogue" between her National League for Democracy (NLD) and the government - both within and beyond the impending National Convention that is due to begin on May 17.

"If Suu Kyi is given complete personal and political freedom, and the international community can unite around a concerted approach - maintaining pressure by setting benchmarks for change, but also offering some forms of support without further conditions - there is a better chance of political and constitutional movement, painfully slow though it may be, than there has been for a decade," said Robert Templer, ICG's Asia program director.

Myanmar has ranked high on the global human rights agenda since the NLD won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections - the first free national elections in Myanmar since the military first took power in 1962.

The military junta, known at that time as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), refused to recognize the election results, however, and cracked down hard against the National League for Democracy. Many of the party's top national and regional leaders were rounded up and thrown in prison, while Suu Kyi spent much of the 1990s under house arrest at her home in Yangon. When it took power, the junta renamed Rangoon Yangon and Burma Myanmar.

With the help of the United Nations and pressure from Western powers, the SLORC, which renamed itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) several years ago, granted conditional freedom to Suu Kyi, with whom it attempted to engage in dialogue on several occasions.

At the same time, the administration of US president Bill Clinton took a series of steps throughout the 1990s to increase pressure on the regime, including imposing a ban in 1997 on new investment by US businesses in Myanmar.

Members of the European Union also took steps to isolate and pressure the government into a more forthcoming position vis-a-vis Suu Kyi and the NLD, but these measures were largely stymied by Chinese support for the regime, as well as a policy of "engagement" by Myanmar's neighbors, particularly Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and, more recently, India.

Hopes for reform received a stunning setback last May 30 when Suu Kyi, who had been trying to rally popular support to her cause during a national tour, was again taken into custody after her motorcade was attacked by a mob of government supporters in the north of the country. Scores of other NLD officials also were taken into custody.

International outrage over the attack further isolated the regime from the West, prompting a shake up in the government. An inveterate hardliner, Senior General Than Shwe, relinquished the premiership to the head of military intelligence, Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, who, while no democrat, is believed to be more sensitive than other members of the ruling junta to international opinion, and the importance it accords to re-establishing a dialogue with Suu Kyi.

At this time, with evidence of shifts in its political approach, the military junta - the State Peace and Development Council (formerly the SLORC) and Prime Minister Khin Nyunt announced a seven-step "roadmap" for constitutional and political reform that includes the convening of a national convention next month to draft a new constitution.

In its analysis, however, the International Crisis Group (IGC) stresses that the military regime, including Khin Nyunt, has made similar moves in the past, that it remains very much in control of all the levers of power and that it has shown no more enthusiasm for a rapid transition to a democratic system than in the past. The national convention, for instance, was last convened in 1993 but only lasted until 1996 when the NLD walked out under protest. Events this May could well repeat themselves "with the same actors, the same script and, quite possibly, the same ending", according to the ICG.

"About the only basis for any optimism is that Khin Nyunt is sensitive to demands that Aung San Suu Kyi be released and given a role in the transition, appears to be seeking some form of accommodation with other political forces in the country, and also appears to be conscious of the need to make significant progress before Myanmar assumes the ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] presidency in 2006," said the ICG. It concluded that the new roadmap "provides at least a chance to begin a process of longer-term political and economic change".

In the context of stalemate between Western countries' pressures for comprehensive democratic reform and Myanmar's neighbors, who prefer regional stability and economic progress, Myanmar's other pressing problems suggest that a new approach could command a broader international concensus. These problems include iron-fisted military control, a deteriorating economic, humanitarian and human rights situation, alarming increases in drug trafficking, illegal migration, and rates of HIV-AIDS infection, said the IGC.

The report cites three elements in a policy that might be able to bridge the gap between Western and regional positions and interests in ways that both maintain external pressure for reform and build the capacity and political will for change within Myanmar itself.