BurmaNet News, February 25-27, 2006

[Editor]

February 25-27, 2006 Issue # 2908

"The smarter long-term bet would be to side with Burma's 50 million
people, who will remember, when the junta finally falls, who enabled
repression and who stood up to it."
- from "India, out of step," an editorial published in the Washington
Post, February 27, 2006

INSIDE BURMA
Reuters: Red Cross says Myanmar junta stops prison visits
Irrawaddy: Junta preparing new offensive against ethnic armies
Mizzima: Burmese military forces Arakans to join people's militia groups

ON THE BORDER
AP: Myanmar's victims flock to a refugee doctor known as 'the Mother
Teresa of Burma'

BUSINESS / TRADE
Xinhua: Three more offshore blocks in Myanmar under gas exploration
Xinhua: Myanmar, S. Korea to cooperate in special agricultural project

ASEAN
AFP: Myanmar visit expected in March for Malaysian FM

REGIONAL
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Indonesian president's ASEAN tour expected to
focus on Myanmar
DVB: Continuing support for NLD special statement of reconciliation

INTERNATIONAL
Japan Economic Newswire: U.N. human rights expert urges Myanmar to release
Suu Kyi by June

OPINION / OTHER
Washington Post: India, out of step

___________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

February 27, Reuters
Red Cross says Myanmar junta stops prison visits - Ed Cropley

Bangkok: Myanmar's military junta has suspended visits by the Red Cross to
90 prisons and labor camps across the country, the humanitarian agency
said on Monday.

"Basically, the situation is not very good," said Fiona Terry, a
spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in
Yangon. "The government has not authorized us to visit since the end of
last year."

The military government in charge of the former Burma had not given any
specific reasons for the termination of the ICRC prison visits, which had
been going on since 1999, she said.

During that time, the ICRC had made 453 visits to prisoners, as well as
two to opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi shortly after
she was detained following clashes between her supporters and government
backers in 2003, she said.

Human rights groups say Myanmar, which has been under military rule since
a 1962 coup, has around 1,100 political prisoners. The ICRC does not
release such information, citing the need for confidentiality.

Terry said the ICRC's ability to operate had become more difficult since
the purge of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in October 2004, with the junta
imposing unworkable conditions on the agency, which visits prisoners in 80
countries and assesses their detention conditions.

One of the most contentious conditions, Terry said, was making the ICRC
take local government-affiliated agencies such as the Myanmar Red Cross or
Myanmar Women's Federation on visits to political prisoners or "security
detainees", as it calls them.

"We were willing to cooperate for a certain amount of things. We were
willing to share our knowledge. We were very happy if some Myanmar groups
got involved in the welfare of detainees," Terry said.

"But obviously we are not able to visit with them. We have to have an
independent view of what's going on and to talk with the detainees without
any witnesses," she said.

Since Khin Nyunt's removal, travel and other curbs have been placed on
many aid groups, including the U.N. World Food Program and the Global Fund
to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which pulled out of Myanmar in
August 2005.

The ICRC was trying to negotiate a solution, Terry said, although the
process was being hampered in part by the military government's move to a
new administrative center at Pyinmana, 200 miles north of the old
colonial-era capital, Yangon.

"We are optimistic that things are going to be resolved but I can't put a
timeline on that," she said.

"We weren't just visiting detainees. We were also delivering quite a lot
of essential drugs and soap, so there are obviously some grave
humanitarian concerns the longer this goes on."

Last week, the United Nations human rights envoy to Myanmar, Paulo Sergio
Pinheiro, cited the cessation of ICRC prison visits as evidence of the
worsening state of human rights in the Southeast Asian nation.

___________________________________

February 27, Irrawaddy
Junta preparing new offensive against ethnic armies - Shah Paung

Burma’s ruling junta has increased its military presence in ethnic
regions, giving rise to fears of a new counterinsurgency campaign,
according to Karen National Union leaders.

“They [Burmese military] are preparing to launch an offensive in
KNU-controlled Brigage 2 and 3,” said KNU General Secretary Mahn Sha.

Brigage 2 is located near the new administrative capital in Pyinmana. In
recent weeks, government troops from the 66th Division have poured into
the region, provoking an exodus of local villagers to refugee camps along
the border with Thailand.

“More than 200 people from Burma have arrived in Mae Ra Moe refugee camp,”
said a representative from the Karen Refugee Committee.

According to the Karen Information Center in Karen State’s Brigage 7, the
number of government troop stationed in the area has increased
dramatically. In neighboring Brigade 6, local residents said they have
seen an increase in military vehicles entering Myawaddy, Kawkareik and
Kyar Inn Seik Gyi.

“As to the border regions of Brigade 6 and 7, we are not yet sure whether
the government will launch an offensive,” Mahn Sha said. “We will have to
investigate further, but it seems likely since this is traditionally open
season on the KNU.”

Burma’s military government and the leaders of the KNU had reached a
“gentleman’s agreement in early January 2004 to halt fighting, but junta
troops have never completely abided by the terms of the agreement. “We
have lost more control area since the gentleman’s ceasefire,” according to
a soldier from the KNU’s Battalion 101.

Other ethnic areas are also worried about renewed government aggression.

“They [junta troops] always stage offensives along the border and inside
Burma’s ethnic regions, but up until now we have seen no specific signs
that they will attack us,” said Nang Hkur San, spokesperson for the Shan
State Army-South.

“But as we are soldiers, we are always ready,” added Nang Hkur San, “and
we have engaged [government troops] every day, though frequently in small
battles that don’t last longer than an hour. We see that they are changing
their troops, but we do not know yet what their target will be.”

Residents of Myawaddy have witnessed the arrival of increasing numbers of
government troops, and fear that the situation in the small eastern
Burmese border town does not look good.

___________________________________

February 27, Mizzima News
Burmese military forces Arakans to join people's militia groups - Min Thu

The Burmese military have forced villagers in Yathetaung township, Arakan
State to form people's militia groups and are planning to provide them
with military training sources told Mizzima.

Residents said western military commander Brigadier General Khin Maung
Myint ordered the formation of the militia groups in 20 villages on
February 15.

Villages affected by the order include Kondan, Sin Paik, Done Paik and
Ahngu Maw from the Lay Daung area.

A resident of Yathetaung township told Mizzima a lieutenant colonel from
the military's western command, a captain from each local infantry and
light battalions and the local Peace and Development Council secretary
visited the villages one by one to supervise the establishment of the
groups.

The resident said the military warned villagers about the threat the
United States military posed to Burma's security.

"Colonel Maung Maung Tin from Western Command headquarters told the
villagers that only because of their military might, the US could defeat
the world's fourth largest army, Iraq and occupied the whole country in
100 hours," the resident said.

"So in case of an emergency threat to Arakan muslims, the people's militia
forces are being constituted, he said to the local people."

The size of the new militia groups varies from village to village but all
are made up of at least 30 men aged between 18 and 45 and sources told
Mizzima similar forces were also planned for neighbouring townships.

A villager from Thetkepyin in Sittwe said previous people's militia groups
had been made up of 10 Red Cross members, 20 fire-fighters and 30
civilians.

Villagers said they were unsure of the motive behind the creation of the
militia groups.

___________________________________
ON THE BORDER

February 27, Associated Press
Myanmar's victims flock to a refugee doctor known as 'the Mother Teresa of
Burma' - Denis D. Gray

Mae Sot: She is branded an enemy by Myanmar's military rulers, but to the
thousands who flock to her clinic many of them victims of the country's
harsh regime Dr. Cynthia Maung is the gentle healer in a world of torched
villages, squalid refugee camps and sweatshops.

After she fled her homeland, the soft-spoken doctor known simply as Dr.
Cynthia set up her clinic in a barn, sterilizing syringes in a rice
cooker. Eighteen years later, it's a medical center that treats more than
50,000 of her desperate countrymen each year.


>From her clinic in this Thai border town, the doctor sends her "backpack

medics" into Myanmar to treat communities either neglected by the
government or savaged by its military in a conflict that has spawned some
1 million internal refugees.

"She is like my real mother," says Mya Mya Winn, 28, who lost her legs to
a land mine as she gathered bamboo shoots near her village. Alone and
homeless, she has lived in the clinic free of charge for five years.

AIDS, malaria, violence against civilians this, says Dr. Cynthia, is
today's Myanmar, her most severely stricken patient.

"And the patient is getting worse. People are very poor and always under
oppression and fear," she says, resting on a tree-shaded bench after
another exhausting day at the Mae Tao Clinic, a cluster of spartan
structures lacking cutting-edge technology but suffused with the warmth of
village life.


>From early that morning, mothers had brought their babies for free

immunizations. At the prosthetics ward, former rebel soldiers, all of them
likewise disabled, were fashioning artificial arms and legs for an annual
intake of some 200 victims of land mines planted by both military and
rebels.

Saw Roman, a 32-year-old ethnic Karen was preparing for one of the
clinic's many training courses which have equipped him to perform
amputations in the field under the guns of soldiers who, he said, have
already killed seven of his comrades.

Four Myanmar and foreign doctors, along with 150 medics and nurses,
wrestle with the daily influx of patients with nowhere else to turn. Some
have reached this border town after journeys of up to two weeks. Others
come from within Thailand, where an estimated 2 million legal and illegal
migrants work as cheap, often exploited labor.

Dr. Cynthia, a Christian from Myanmar's Karen ethnic minority, accepts
everyone. She just charges 25 cents a visit.

"We are not only helping people but trying to change the system in Burma,
to seek to build a new generation. The vision and mission have become
clear a political solution in Burma," she says, like all opponents of the
regime shunning the junta-imposed name for her country Myanmar.

The dictatorship in Myanmar has a different take on her.

In a government-run English-language newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar,
an article from 2001 singles out Dr. Cynthia among "expatriates,
absconders, insurgents and opium smuggling terrorists who, after breaching
the laws, causing unrest and launching armed insurgencies in Myanmar, are
taking refuge in Thailand and enjoying the aids provided to them by
Thailand and the West to cause disturbances in Myanmar."

Elsewhere, her renown has spread. The 46-year-old doctor is backed by two
dozen foreign aid agencies and has won the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia's
equivalent of the Nobel Prize. She has been dubbed the "Angel of the
Border" and "Mother Teresa of Burma."

Although she says she isn't directly involved in politics, she echoes Aung
San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader, in advocating change
through peaceful dialogue, and keeps Suu Kyi's portrait on her office
wall.

It was the Suu Kyi-led uprising in 1988 that changed her life. The young
doctor, three years out of medical school, took part in the protests
against the government and when they were ruthlessly crushed joined the
exodus of dissidents, trekking through the jungle for seven days until she
reached the Thai border. She hasn't seen her parents or siblings since.

She lives frugally in a small wooden house with her husband and four
children, two of them adopted from among the many orphans and abandoned
children who pass through her clinic.

Even her position as a refugee in Thailand is precarious her clinic hasn't
even received official registration.

But colleagues say Dr. Cynthia, quietly tending to her patients dressed in
a simple sarong, sandals and traditional white blouse, confronts her
crushing workload with unflagging serenity and toughness of purpose.

"She guides us and gives us inspiration," says Filipino optometrist Jerry
F. Ramos. "And she tells us: 'Work from the heart, and for no other
reason.'"

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

February 26, Xinhua General News Service
Three more offshore blocks in Myanmar under gas exploration

Yangon: Three more available blocks off Myanmar's southern Tanintharyi
coast are under natural gas exploration with test wells being planned for
drilling by Malaysia 's Petronas Company, sources with the state-run
Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise confirmed Sunday.

A geophysical site survey at blocks M-16, M-17 and M-18, with areas
ranging from about 13,000 square-kilometers (sq-km) to 14, 000 sq-km, has
begun this week and the survey will last over a month until late March,
the sources said.

Petronas had earlier been involved in gas exploration at block M-15 in the
same offshore area.

Recent years have seen foreign oil companies increase engagement in oil
and gas exploration in Myanmar. Thailand's PTTEP, for example, has covered
a number of blocks including M-3, M-4, M- 7, M-9 and M-11 under contracts.

Besides, a consortium comprising South Korea's Daewoo International, South
Korea Gas Corporation, the ONGC Videsh Ltd of India and the Gas Authority
of India has also been engaged in gas exploration at block A-1 off
Myanmar's western Rakhine coast since 2000. In early 2004, huge natural
gas deposit, estimated to yield up to 14 trillion cubic feet (396.2
billion cubic-meters) of gas, was found at the block.

Myanmar is planning to sell gas produced from the area to India or China
and negotiations are underway to reach formal agreements.

Another consortium made up of Chinese and Singaporean companies is also
engaged in oil and gas exploration in some onshore and offshore areas.

Since Myanmar opened its oil and gas sector to foreign investment in 1988,
oil companies from a dozen of countries have stepped in. Outstanding
investment in the area include the Yadana gas field project in the gulf of
Mottama and the Yetagun off the Tanintharyi coast.

The Yadana involves multi-national companies of PTTEP (Thailand) , TOTAL
(France), UNOCAL (United States) and MOGE (Myanmar), while the Yetagun
involves PTTEP (Thailand), Petronas (Malaysia), Nippon (Japan) and MOGE
(Myanmar).

With three large offshore and 19 onshore oil and gas fields, Myanmar
possesses a total of 87 trillion cubic-feet (TCF) or 2.46 trillion
cubic-meters (TCM) of gas reserve and 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable
crude oil reserve, official statistics said.

The figures show that in the fiscal year of 2004-05 which ended in March,
Myanmar produced 7.48 million barrels of crude oil and 10.69 billion cubic
meters (BCM) of gas. Gas export during the year went to 9.5 BCM, earning
over 1 billion U.S. dollars.

The statistics also indicate that since Myanmar opened to foreign
investment in late 1988, such investment in the oil and gas sector had
reached 2.61 billion dollars as of the end of 2005, dominating the
country's foreign investment sectorally.

Foreign oil companies engaged in the oil and gas sector are mainly from
Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Indonesia, India, South Korea, Malaysia
and Thailand.

____________________________________

February 26, Xinhua General News Service
Myanmar, S. Korea to cooperate in special agricultural project

Yangon: Myanmar and South Korea will cooperate in a project of
"Specialized Complex of Agriculture" under mutually beneficial basis to
boost the development of Myanmar's agriculture, a local weekly reported in
its latest issue.

Discussions have been conducted over the move between the Myanmar
Agriculture Department, the Chonnam National University and the KBH
Company of (South) Korea during a recent visit to Yangon by the South
Korean representatives, the Flower News quoted the Myanmar department as
saying.

The project covers undertaking agricultural research, human resources
development, growing of agricultural crops on commercial scale for export,
dissemination of agricultural technique to Myanmar experts and exchange of
information and communications technology through online system, the
report said.

Meanwhile, the South Korean International Cooperation Agency ( KOICA) will
also fund Myanmar's development programs with 2 million U.S. dollars
during this year, an earlier release of the South Korean Embassy said.

Those programs cover the sectors of health, agriculture, electric power
and rail transportation.

Since 1988, KOICA has sent 70 volunteers to Myanmar for exchanges in
agriculture, language and sports with Myanmar experts, while inviting 700
Myanmar staff to South Korea for training.

The KOICA is also conducting a survey on building a railroad to link
Myanmar and Thailand, which will be constructed in southern Myanmar,
extending from Mon state's Yay township to Thailand.

According to official statistics, South Korea's investment in Myanmar had
exceeded 190 million U.S. dollars as of 2005 since the country opened to
foreign investment in late 1988. The investment involved about 100 Korean
companies in 34 projects.

The statistics also show that the two nations' bilateral trade amounted to
127.14 million dollars in the fiscal year 2004-05 with Myanmar's exports
to South Korea accounting for 36.86 million dollars and its imports from
South Korea taking 90.28 million dollars.

____________________________________
ASEAN

February 25, Agence France Presse
Myanmar visit expected in March for Malaysian FM

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Saturday
that a date had been set for his landmark visit to Myanmar after his
January trip was cancelled.

"Yes (a visit date) has been fixed. But it is better that I do not reveal
it," he was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency in
southern Johor state.

Official sources said Syed Hamid was expected to visit in March ahead of
an annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign
ministers' retreat in Indonesia in April.

"We are hopeful the visit will take place in March. He (Syed Hamid) is
ready to go. The intention is to have the visit before the April retreat,"
the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Under pressure from the international community, ASEAN at its annual
meeting in December reached agreement with Yangon to allow Syed Hamid to
visit as an envoy to check on the progress of democracy.

Although no date was set, the visit was expected to occur in January, but
the junta announced the Myanmar government was "too busy" moving to a
logging town about 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Yangon.

Syed Hamid last week said his visit to Myanmar would occur under a veil of
secrecy.

"You will hear it when we have done it," he said. "All these need to be
done quietly and with a cool head because once you are subjected to media
pressure it will be more difficult."

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Myanmar's junta brutally crushed pro-democracy demonstrations in 1988 and
two years later rejected the result of national elections won by the party
of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In November, it extended her house arrest by another six months. The Nobel
Peace prizewinner has already spent more than 10 of the last 16 years
under house arrest.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

February 27, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Indonesian president's ASEAN tour expected to focus on Myanmar

Jakarta: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono left Jakarta Monday
for a five-day visit to three other ASEAN member countries, with political
repression in Myanmar (Burma) expected to be the most contentious issue in
talks with regional leaders.

Local analysts said they expected Yudhoyono to push Yangon to adhere to
its so-called roadmap to democracy and to release Nobel laureate and
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In addition to Myanmar, Yudhoyono's trip will take him to Cambodia and
Brunei.

Presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal said besides discussing bilateral
issues, Yudhoyono's visit to Myanmar is intended to convey a "special
message" from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to Myanmar
military leader Than Shwe.

"In this visit to Myanmar, the president will convey a special message
from the UN secretary general," Detik.com, an online news portal, quoted
Djalal as saying. He did not elaborate.

Antara, Indonesia's state-run news agency, reported that during his stay
in Myanmar, Yudhoyono had no plans to meet with democracy icon Suu Kyi.

A group of Indonesian legislators, who have set up a caucus for democracy
in Myanmar, last week urged Yudhoyono to cancel his visit to Myanmar
unless he plans to press Yangon's military junta to immediately release
Suu Kyi and move faster to restore democracy.

Yudhoyono and his entourage were expected to arrive in Bandar Seri Begawan
on Monday afternoon to meet with Brunei's Sultan Hasanal Bolkiah.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Indonesian leader will proceed to Cambodia for a
two-day visit, during which he was scheduled to pay a courtesy call to
Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni. He was then scheduled to meet with other
Cambodian leaders, including Parliament Speaker Norodom Ranaridh and Prime
Minister Hun Sen.

Yudhoyono and his team was scheduled to arrive in Yangon on Wednesday
afternoon for a two-day state visit, the last leg of a three-nation tour,
where he will hold talks with Myanmar's head of state, Than Shwe, on
bilateral issues.

A memorandum of understanding to establish a joint commission on bilateral
cooperation between Indonesia and Myanmar was scheduled to be signed
between the two countries' foreign ministers.

Yudhoyono's visit to Myanmar comes as criticism from within ASEAN has
grown substantially as Suu Kyi, leader of the main opposition party,
remains confined to her home nearly three years after her May 2003 arrest.

ASEAN, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded in 1967,
comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore,
Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. It admitted Myanmar in 1997 despite
strong opposition from Western countries.

____________________________________

February 26, Democratic Voice of Burma
Continuing support for NLD special statement of reconciliation

Some Burmese nationals working and studying in Singapore, in a statement
issued recently, expressed their support for the National League for
Democracy’s (NLD) special statement issued on 12 February, calling for
national reconciliation and positive actions.

The statement – written in English with signatures of Burmese engineers,
students and migrant workers – will be sent to the Singaporean government
along with copies to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
and Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council
(SPDC), a Burmese engineer told DVB. Copies of the statement of the NLD
will be distributed to the Burmese nationals in the country, he added.

Meanwhile, Students and Youth Congress of Burma (SYCB) held a seminar at
an unidentified location on the Thai-Burmese border to exchange their
views on the matter with ethnic national and other political groups on 26
February.

A joint-secretary of Democratic Party for New Society (DPNS), Ngwe Lin who
attended the meeting told DVB that the people of Burma are sending a
sending the message that there is an urgent need for face-to-face talks
between the junta and the opposition. He added that if the junta reacted
to the NLD’s offer by the dissolution of and crackdowns on the NLD and the
Committee Representing People’s Parliament (CRPP) as threatened, it is the
country and its people which will suffer most.

SYCB member Ko Htut said, all the representatives of all groups welcome
and support the NLD statement along with the CRPP and other pro-democracy
groups which stated their full support recently.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

February 27, Japan Economic Newswire
U.N. human rights expert urges Myanmar to release Suu Kyi by June

New York: A United Nations human rights expert has urged Myanmar's
military government to release all political prisoners including
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by June, while estimating the total
number of political prisoners in Myanmar at 1,144 as of the end of last
year, according to a recent U.N. report obtained by Kyodo News on Monday.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in Myanmar, said in the report to be formally submitted to a
session of the Geneva-based Commission on Human Rights from March 13 to
April 21 that the humanitarian situation in the military-ruled country
remains "grave" and "all political prisoners should be released" by June
2006.

The human rights concerns are "largely the same" as those reported in 2000
when Pinheiro commenced his activity as special rapporteur, according to
the latest 29-page report.

"The activities of political parties remain severely repressed and subject
to scrutiny by government agents...Members of NLD (the National League for
Democracy) and other political parties are susceptible to harassment and
imprisonment on a continuous basis," according to the report.

The report also said in a tone of desperation that despite early
indications from the military government showing its willingness to
address these problems, "all such willingness appears to have
disappeared."

Pinheiro has visited Myanmar on six occasions, with the last mission
having taken place in November 2003, and he has been denied a visa to
Myanmar since then.

In January this year, U.N. special envoy to Myanmar Razali Ismail resigned
his post over frustration with the military government's refusal to let
him visit Myanmar since March 2004.

The Myanmar junta extended in November last year the house arrest of Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate Suu Kyi, the leader of NLD, for another half year.

Pinheiro said he is "gravely disturbed that a legitimate political leader
continues to be held hostage in solitary confinement."

Suu Kyi, 60, has been in detention for more than 10 of the last 16 years.
The NLD won the 1990 general election by a landslide but was blocked by
the junta from taking power.

The junta also recently extended the house arrest of Tin Oo, Suu Kyi's
aide and vice chairman of NLD, for another year. Tin Oo, 79, has been
under house arrest since Feb. 13, 2004.

The prolonged detention of the pro-democracy leaders has drawn strong
criticism from the international community. U.N. Secretary General Kofi
Annan has said he is "deeply disappointed" with the prolonged detention.

Janelle Saffin, an Australian legal expert on Myanmar who has a close
relationship both with Suu Kyi and Tin Oo, also faulted the military
government in a recently released statement, saying that it is using "a
legal fiction to continue the already unlawful and arbitrary detention of
Tin Oo."

Under a 1975 law, detention can be extended annually for up to five years,
and Saffin called it "a law that violates all precepts of the rule of
law."

"No progress will be made towards national reconciliation as long as key
political representatives are being locked behind bars, their constituents
subject to grave and systematic human rights abuses and their political
concerns disregarded," Saffin said.

In a bid to defuse the situation, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono will travel to Myanmar to discuss Myanmar's democracy efforts
with junta leader Gen. Than Shwe on March 1-2, the first trip by a
regional leader since December when the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations called on Myanmar to release political prisoners.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

February 27, The Washington Post
India, out of step

As the two growing powers of Asia sort out their places in their continent
and the world, India has a comparative advantage over China that it
doesn't always exploit: its status as the globe's largest democracy. For a
while, when China was growing economically much faster than India, this
advantage wasn't so obvious; you could conclude that democracy was too
messy to allow rapid development. But India's pace of growth has picked up
dramatically in the past decade, and it now can offer a model to smaller
Asian countries -- themselves increasingly democratic -- of growth and a
humane government complementing each other.

Indian officials at times grasp the advantage this presents. At a recent
meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, India touted
its rule of law and democratic tradition as a lure to foreign investors.
Innovation, and the growth of "knowledge industries" such as computer
software creation, benefit from India's brand of open politics and
communication, they pointed out.

But India has yet to translate this understanding into a coherent foreign
policy. This week President Bush pays a call; the week after, India's
president for the first time will visit neighboring Burma -- one of Asia's
two (with North Korea) most brutal dictatorships. While Burma's army rapes
and pillages and forces children and others into service, India sells
weapons and seeks ever-closer military-to-military ties. This puts the
Indians out of step with the United States, Europe and increasingly even
Southeast Asia, which is beginning to recognize that its policy of
"engagement" with Burma's dictators has borne no fruit.

India's motive here is easy to discern: It's competing with China for
close ties with Burma and access to its natural gas and other resources.
That's understandable, but India will never beat China's dictators at
their own game. The smarter long-term bet would be to side with Burma's 50
million people, who will remember, when the junta finally falls, who
enabled repression and who stood up to it.