A Green Light for Burma To Join ASEAN 's Ranks
International Herald Tribune
January 25, 1997
Michael Richardson

The Association of South East Asian Nations has decided to include Burma as a new member this year, even though the presence of the Burmese military regime could cause a rift in relations with the West and disrupt plans to hold a summit meeting between European and Asian leaders, officials and analysts say.

With foreign ministers of ASEAN and the European Union scheduled to meet in Singapore next month, all ASEAN countries have now made it clear that they will not be deterred from accepting Burma as a member by Western objections to its record of human rights abuses and political repression.

Thailand and the Philippines — which had previously voiced doubts about Burma joining ASEAN unless the internal situation improved — have dropped those reservations to advance regional unity.

As a result, ASEAN will "very likely" grant membership to Burma, Cambodia and Laos in 1997, Mahathir bin Mohamad, the Malaysian prime minister, said recently.

Malaysia will be chairman of ASEAN this year. With Indonesia, it is leading the push to unite Southeast Asia by bringing Burma, Cambodia and Laos into the group at its annual meeting in Kuala Lumpur in July.

"With the 10 Southeast Asian countries together, we will form a community with a combined population of 500 million, bigger in fact than Europe or North America," Mr. Mahathir said. "We may not be as rich, but the potential will be tremendous. We will be a significant player in Asia and in the world."

Just after ASEAN and EU foreign ministers meet in Singapore on Feb. 13 and 14, they will be joined by their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea to discuss the agenda for a second meeting of European and Asian heads of government in London in 1998.

The issue of Burma's imminent membership in ASEAN threatens to disrupt the London meeting because leaders of the Burmese military government are banned from visiting Europe under visa restrictions imposed as part of a package of sanctions imposed by the EU in 1996 to protest a crackdown on the democratic opposition in Burma. The United States imposed similar penalties.

Membership in ASEAN does not confer an automatic right to join the Europe-Asia summit conference. But ASEAN officials said that they expected all members, including Burma, would want to participate and that this would have ASEAN's support.

With Rangoon continuing to harass the opposition National League for Democracy and refusing to negotiate with its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate, despite repeated calls for dialogue by the United Nations and the West, it seems unlikely that the EU will ease its sanctions to allow the Burmese government to be represented at the London meeting.

"We know that it would be a very negative gesture by the EU to refuse Burma membership in the Asia-Europe meeting," a European diplomat said Friday. "But if the summit were tomorrow, there would be a visa problem. Whether there is still one in 1998 or subsequently will be heavily dependent on what happens in Burma."

ASEAN includes Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Burma, Cambodia and Laos are observers, and all three want to become full members when the group gathers in Kuala Lumpur. ASEAN leaders meeting in Jakarta last month decided that the three would be admitted at the same time but did not give a date. Since then, Thailand and the Philippines, which had earlier expressed reservations about bringing Burma into ASEAN this year, have shifted their position to one of support so that the group has a consensus on the issue, officials said.

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