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Lifting Burma sanctions 'premature': Campbell
Irrawaddy - February 3, 2011
Lalit K Jha, Washington, DC – Expressing "concern" and "disappointment" with Burma's military junta, which is going ahead with its own version of democracy in the country ignoring the wishes of its own people and global community, a top US diplomat on Wednesday said that the US would continue to push the Burmese authorities to give legal status to the National League of Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell told foreign journalists in Washington that the lifting of sanctions against the Burmese military junta – as demanded by Asean – is premature.
"Overall, we remain concerned and disappointed," Campbell told reporters at a news conference held at the Washington Foreign Press Center. "You will have seen that several Southeast Asian nations have come out saying it's time to lift sanctions. We have stated very clearly we think that that is obviously premature and that we are looking for much more concrete steps from the new government as they form a new government policy on a host of issues,"
Campbell said the US has stated very clearly in the past that it was disappointed with the preparations in advance for the elections held last year. "We think that most of the efforts domestically revealed that the process was fatally flawed," he said.
"We did welcome the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. We have been in deep consultations with her, along with many other nations. We have encouraged her role. We will be continuing to press the authorities in the country about allowing her political party to take on a legal status, despite the ruling of the Supreme Court," Campbell said.
Generally speaking, the United States recognizes that there are many problems inside the country, Campbell noted. "There's the lack of dialogue with the key ethnic minorities. The vast majority of political prisoners have not been released. There are enormous difficulties to conduct any aspect of civil society. The country continues to engage in proliferation activities that are antithetical to the maintenance of peace and stability in the region and in violation of UN Security Council resolutions," he said.
Despite all these, Campbell said the US still believes that a form of engagement and testing the leadership in terms of its goals and ambitions are appropriate next steps. "So we will be watching carefully and closely for positive signs," he said. "But we also stand ready to take steps, should there be a continuation of negative trends or backtracking even further on the kinds of things that we'd like to see inside the country."
Campbell said the Obama administration is disappointed that despite its policy of engagement with the Burmese military junta, nothing much has changed. "We have been disappointed, there's no question, about the overall engagement policy over the course of the last year that was enunciated by President Obama and laid out clearly by Secretary [of State, Hillary] Clinton. We have tried to be very clear about potential steps that Burma could take and that we would respond to accordingly. We have been disappointed, basically, across the spectrum in this regard," he said.
"It is also the case, however, that we believe a degree of engagement serves the best interests of the United States and our regional policy. We think that it is appropriate to at least create the opportunity to test this new government about whether they're prepared to take the necessary steps to rejoin the international community and also to work more closely with the United States and other partners," said the US official.
"It is true that over the course of the last year there was a lot of uncertainty and maneuvering inside the country in anticipation of this flawed election," Campbell concluded. " I think it'd be fair to say that we are still waiting to see what steps a new government might be prepared to take, although, frankly, we are quite concerned about steps that we've seen to date and are not encouraged by the level of dialogue that we've seen inside the country."
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