Thai Leader Visits Myanmar as Asia Engages Junta Before Vote
Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand's prime minister
Peter Foley/Bloomberg
Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand's prime minister.
Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand's prime minister. Photographer: Peter Foley/Bloomberg
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva will visit Myanmar today ahead of the military-ruled country’s first election in 20 years as its neighbors engage with the generals shunned by the U.S. and Europe.
Abhisit’s one-day visit comes weeks after junta leader Than Shwe’s first trips to India and China in about eight years. The three neighbors account for a third of the world’s population and about two-thirds of Myanmar’s commerce, giving the military leadership an economic lifeline as the U.S. and Europe impose sanctions.
“We don’t think sanctions have worked and we don’t think sanctions will work,” Abhisit said in an Oct. 6 interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “We think that engagement, frustrating at times as it can be, offers the most realistic approach.”
Thailand, China and India are building roads, ports and pipelines in Southeast Asia’s poorest country to access its natural resources and move cargo quickly to and from the Middle East and Europe. The country’s strategic location has undermined U.S. sanctions, which President Barack Obama may soon tighten to target banks that hold offshore accounts for junta leaders.
“There’s a difference in the way we see things,” Abhisit said, explaining the competing approaches to Myanmar by Asia nations and the West. “We don’t have the luxury of distance.”
Political Prisoners
Last month, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called on Myanmar to release some 2,000 political prisoners prior to the Nov. 7 election, which the main opposition party led by detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is boycotting. Obama also called for her release in a Sept. 24 meeting with leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
“The European Union has already made it clear that sanctions -- targeted at the regime and its sources of revenue - - will not be lifted until genuine progress is made,” U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg wrote in the International Herald Tribune on Oct. 4. “We must now work with our Asian partners, using our collective clout, to push for that progress.”
Myanmar’s exports to the U.S. and EU amounted to less than 4 percent of total overseas sales last year, according to European data. Sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Europe cover trade, investment and financial transactions involving the regime.
“The unjust economic coercive measures and trade embargoes” should be removed, Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win told the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 28.
Chinese Investment
Thailand, the junta’s biggest trading partner, pipes in natural gas from Myanmar’s Gulf of Martaban to meet about 30 percent of its natural gas needs. Italian-Thai Development Pcl, Thailand’s largest construction company, is close to signing an almost $12 billion deal with Myanmar to build a deep-sea port on the Indian Ocean that will reduce shipping times for exporters.
Chinese investments in pipeline and hydropower projects in Myanmar amounted to $8.2 billion in May, according to government statistics, an amount greater than any Southeast Asian country apart from Singapore received last year. China National Petroleum Corp. started construction four months ago on oil and gas pipelines that traverse the country.
India approved plans in February for state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and GAIL India Ltd. to invest a combined $1.3 billion in a natural gas project in Myanmar. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to develop the country’s infrastructure, industry and information technology when Than Shwe visited New Delhi in July.
‘Tremendous Potential’
Myanmar has “tremendous potential” because of its natural resources, fertile land and location, said Jean-Pierre Verbiest, Thailand country director at the Asian Development Bank. “If things normalized, it’s a country which could become one of the richest in the area.”
The junta plans to release Suu Kyi “days” after the November election, Agence France-Presse reported on Sept. 30, citing unidentified officials. Her party won 92 percent of seats in a 1990 election that was subsequently ignored by the military. Suu Kyi has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, with her latest house arrest starting in 2003.
“There’s unlikely to be any major changes as far as the way elections are going to be held,” Abhisit said. “We should think more about helping Myanmar people, capacity building, because in the end any democracy needs that to have strong foundations.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net.
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