ASEAN gambles on Myanmar’s regional leadership

Reuters: Southeast Asian nations endorsed Myanmar on Thursday for the chairmanship of its regional grouping in 2014, gambling that the isolated country can stick to reforms begun this year that could lead it out of half a century of isolation.

But U.S. President Barack Obama cautioned that Myanmar, also known as Burma, must still demonstrate improvements in human rights in his first remarks since the authoritarian regime freed hundreds of political prisoners in October and vowed more reforms in the weeks ahead.

“Some political prisoners have been released. The government has begun a dialogue. Still, violations of human rights persist,” Obama said in a speech to the Australian parliament ahead of joining Asian leaders on the Indonesian resort island of Bali for an East Asia Summit.

“So we will continue to speak clearly about the steps that must be taken for the government of Burma to have a better relationship with the United States.”

Myanmar’s chairmanship of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), announced at a summit of its leaders in Bali, is a risky gambit for the regional grouping.

While it gives Myanmar coveted international recognition, it could backfire by provoking Western boycotts of ASEAN events in 2014 if Myanmar’s new government backslides on reforms and fails to convince the United States and Europe to end sanctions imposed in response to abuses by its former military rulers.

Such boycotts would be an embarrassment for Southeast Asia, a region of about 600 million people, at a time when it wants to be seen as a counterpoint to China’s growing influence in Asia.

“The change in Myanmar in the last six months, by Myanmar standards, is absolutely breathtaking,” said Hal Hill, a professor of Southeast Asian economies at the Australian National University.

“But has Myanmar reformed enough to satisfy the Europeans and the Americans? At the moment, not yet. It is very promising but it is not yet embedded and credible,” he said.

The United States and European Union have applauded Myanmar’s recent freeing of political prisoners but want deeper changes, including peace with restive ethnic groups, before they will consider lifting sanctions that have isolated the country and driven it closer to China.

But Southeast Asia has moved quickly to embrace change in the resource-rich former British colony, whose strategic location between rising powers India and China, and vast, untapped natural-gas resources, are drawing investor interest.

“Be assured that we are now growing into a democratic society,” Ko Ko Hlaing, chief political adviser to the Myanmar president, told reporters.

Kyaw Hsan, Myanmar’s Information and Culture Minister, told reporters more reforms were in store. “We are hoping for a more open country with a thriving democracy and one that is active in the local, regional and international arena.”

A senior Myanmar Home Ministry official told Reuters on Wednesday the government was ready to release more political prisoners.

Countries across Southeast Asia welcomed the chairmanship as a critical milestone after years frustration over Myanmar’s isolation as the region approaches a European Union-style Asian community in 2015.

Myanmar’s progress warranted a response from the West, Thai Foreign Minister Surapong Towijakchaiku told Reuters.

“They should ease sanctions they have done in the past,” he said, when asked if Thailand believed the United States and Europe should relax their restrictions.

“We believe that with the positive improvements in Myanmar right now, this has shown that Myanmar would like to come back to the democratic way,” he told reporters earlier.

Myanmar has embarked on a series of reforms since the army nominally handed over power in March to civilians after the first elections in two decades.

The junta was replaced by a military-dominated civilian government in a process mocked at the time as a sham to seal authoritarian rule behind a democratic facade.