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2 Myanmar's generals win
one By Clive Parker
The
United States put the best face on a bad situation
after China and Russia teamed up to quash a
landmark UN Security Council resolution aimed at
sanctioning Myanmar over its abysmal human rights
record. The vote underscored the three countries'
intensifying competition for influence in
Southeast Asia and beyond.
Nine of the
council's 15 members supported the failed
resolution, which called for the Myanmar regime to
free political prisoners, hold dialogue with the
opposition and stop attacking ethnic
minority groups, indicating a
majority agreed that the situation in Myanmar was
dire and must somehow improve. At the same time,
the divisive vote represented the first time since
1989 that more than one permanent member used its
veto power on the same resolution.
Significantly, it represented the first
time since 1972 that Beijing and Moscow had voted
together against their former Cold War adversary
to block a UN Security Council initiative. More
recently, China and Russia have entered into a
loose alliance aimed at countervailing the US's
global influence, particularly on security
matters.
The US, which has for nearly a
decade maintained trade and investment sanctions
against Myanmar, has recently started referring to
Myanmar as an "outpost of tyranny", apparently one
tier below Washington's designated "axis of evil"
countries, Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
"The only mixed message here is whether
this issue deserved to be on the Security Council
agenda," acting US ambassador to the UN Alenjandro
Wolff told reporters after the vote. "There is no
mixed message, no mixed signal at all about how
the international community and this council feels
about the situation in [Myanmar]."
China
overlooks Myanmar's rights record in pursuit of
establishing strong economic and strategic
relations with the military-run regime. After
taking Myanmar's side at the UN, China's National
Petroleum Corporation on Monday secured three new
oil and natural gas exploration concessions off
the energy-rich country's western Rakhine coast.
Russia, meanwhile, has recently pursued various
big-ticket arms and energy deals with the ruling
generals, including a recently shelved plan to
build the country's first nuclear reactor.
"Sometimes if you are in a position to
express your differences, you have to choose,
whether it is by abstention or veto," said Wang
Guangya, China's ambassador to the UN, after
voting against the Myanmar resolution. "So this
time I think I was forced to do it." Added Russian
ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin: "Throughout
the process we have been very clear and open about
our position."
Following weeks of intense
consultations behind closed doors, the co-sponsors
of the initiative, the US and Britain, failed to
convince China and Russia that the situation
inside Myanmar constituted a threat to regional
peace and security. After circulating a strong,
but non-binding, draft resolution at the UN in
December, the US delayed a vote before the end of
the year, the first sign that the initiative was
facing Chinese and Russian resistance.
The
text was subsequently revised to give Myanmar's
government six months to initiate reforms,
compared to the three-month timeframe included in
the original draft. After formally introducing the
text to the council on January 9, the US spent two
additional days revising it in an attempt to win
over China and Russia, diplomats in New York said.
The critical paragraph that aimed to characterize
Myanmar as a serious risk to peace and security
was changed, calling on the regime to initiate
reforms to "minimize serious risks to peace and
security".
The US also agreed to
acknowledge contentious progress by the regime in
"reducing opium production", a curious concession
given that even United Nations figures, considered
conservative by independent organizations
monitoring the drug trade, showed total opium
output in Myanmar last year increased by 2%. After
Afghanistan, Myanmar is believed to be the
second-largest producer of opium in the world.
Even though Moscow and Beijing alerted
Washington and London they would veto the motion,
the two Western allies nonetheless decided to
proceed with the vote to at least bring the
deteriorating rights situation in Myanmar to the
world stage. The vote notably came at a time when
the US's and UK's own rights records had come
under growing scrutiny for their handling of the
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also came at
a time when new questions are being raised about
the legality of the recent US-supported Ethiopian
invasion of Somalia - a hot-button issue that
could likewise appear on the Security Council's
agenda.
As an anonymous US official said
last Thursday, a day before Washington knew the
Myanmar initiative would fail: "In pressing for a
vote on our resolution ... we are showing that
things have not improved and time is not to be
squandered in pointing that out. Let countries
stand by their votes, we say."
No clear
pathways Although the failed vote
highlighted Myanmar's deplorable human-rights
situation, which will nonetheless remain on the
council's
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