U.N. envoy back in Asia to press for Myanmar talks

Struggling against Myanmar’s stubborn generals and neighbors skeptical of sanctions, a United Nations envoy returned to the region Sunday to push for negotiations between the junta and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Ibrahim Gambari, once a foreign minister for a Nigerian military regime, is to begin talks today with officials in Thailand before visiting Malaysia and Indonesia. All three belong to the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, which opposes imposing more sanctions on fellow member Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Gambari is also scheduled to visit regional powers India, China and Japan before returning to Myanmar for his second round of crisis meetings in two weeks.

He had planned to return to Myanmar in mid-November, but U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told him to speed up the mediation effort after the U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously said it “strongly deplores” a violent crackdown that began last month. Myanmar has acknowledged that at least 10 people were killed, though activists and Western governments believe the toll is higher. Thousands of people were arrested.

In his Oct. 2 meeting with senior junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, Gambari failed to persuade the regime to stop the bloody repression. It was almost a repeat of a failed mission last year, when the generals also stonewalled Gambari.

But international outrage over images of soldiers shooting unarmed demonstrators last month forced the junta to make a seemingly minor concession that the U.N. envoy may be able to leverage into significant progress.

Amid U.S. and European Union threats of new sanctions, such as a possible arms embargo, the generals named Deputy Labor Minister Maj. Gen. Aung Kyi to handle any talks with Suu Kyi. He is described as a moderate to whom fellow generals have turned to handle vexing image problems, such as allegations that Myanmar uses forced labor.

The junta fed doubts about its willingness to reform by insisting that Suu Kyi meet certain conditions, such as ending her support for sanctions against the regime, before any talks could begin.

Suu Kyi, a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been in detention for 12 of the last 18 years, has previously insisted on negotiations without preconditions.

Despite the threat of sanctions, Myanmar’s junta appears confident it can fend off pressure for significant moves toward democracy, as it has repeatedly in its 45 years in power. The generals insist the military government provides the best guarantee of stability and economic development in a poor and fractious country.

The claim has some powerful backers in the region, where some of Myanmar’s neighbors are concerned that a collapse of military rule might spark unrest that could spread across their borders.

India and China, Myanmar’s biggest neighbors and important customers for the country’s oil and natural gas, have called the current crisis an internal matter, though China joined fellow Security Council members last week in deploring the violence.

Myanmar’s 47 million people belong to 135 ethnic groups, each with its own language and dialects. Several groups also can be found in neighboring countries such as Thailand, China and India.

Last week, Indonesian Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono voiced a familiar concern when he warned that pushing “for instant democracy in a state of confusion” in Myanmar could “even lead to another Iraq.”

Indonesia’s government, which has been dominated behind the scenes by the military since the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, believes power-sharing between the military and civilians is the best solution for Myanmar.

Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 elections in balloting rejected by the junta, does not present “a credible alternative” to military rule, Sudarsono told the Agence France-Presse news service.

He dismissed the Bush administration’s call for an arms embargo against Myanmar, and human rights activists’ demands for tough economic sanctions against the junta, as “the lexicon of the liberal press and the liberal media everywhere.”

But the U.S. and other Western countries see Myanmar’s junta as a source of instability rather than a bulwark against it.

The economy is so battered -- a condition widely blamed on the junta’s mismanagement -- that more than a third of the country’s children suffer from malnutrition, according to the United Nations. High food costs and the sudden doubling of gas prices set off protests this summer.

Myanmar is a major source of human trafficking in the region, including women and children bound for the sex trade. It is also the world’s second-largest source of opium, the key ingredient in heroin.

Afghanistan is by far the biggest source of opium, producing 20 times the amount of the drug that Myanmar does, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported this month.

But opium production in Myanmar jumped 46% this year to more than 500 tons, the U.N. agency said.

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paul.watson@latimes.com