Asean relieved as Myanmar junta skips 2006 chair

VIENTIANE - Myanmar's military junta will skip its turn as Asean chairman in 2006, defusing a simmering row between the 10-member southeast Asian bloc and the West over the detention of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We agreed that once Myanmar is ready to take its turn to be the Asean chair, it can do so," Lao Foreign Minister Somsavat Lengsavada said on Tuesday, reading out a joint statement from the Association of South East Asian Nations.

The former Burma wanted to focus its full attention on efforts at national reconciliation and restoring democracy after more than four decades of military rule, the statement said.

"We expressed our sincere appreciation to the government of Myanmar for not allowing its national preoccupation to affect Asean solidarity and cohesiveness," Somsavat said, adding that 2006 would be a "critical year" for Myanmar.

The Philippines, the next in line for a role which rotates alphabetically, will now become chairman after Malaysia finishes its stint in mid-2006.

Few western governments believe Yangon's democracy rhetoric, especially while Nobel laureate Suu Kyi -- whose National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the army -- remains under house arrest.

The day before the Asean meeting in Vientiane, British Foreign office minister Ian Pearson repeated threats of US and European Union boycotts of Asean meetings in 2006 if the generals took up the reins before embracing any meaningful political reform.

"Clearly it would be, I think, very difficult not just for the UK but for the EU and for other countries to deal with Asean if Burma was to hold the chair under the current circumstances," said.

Asean, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, has been trying to tease political reforms out of Yangon's generals through "constructive engagement".

Conversely, Europe and the United States have favoured sanctions in an attempt to restore multi-party civilian government to the former British colony, which has been under army rule since a 1962 coup.

Neither approach has made any headway, and Asean, which admitted Myanmar in 1997 in the hope of showing it the benefits of political and economic openness, has instead found the credibility of its political and economic ambitions tainted by its "black sheep" member.

Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win said Yangon remained committed to completing its widely discredited, seven-step "roadmap to democracy", unveiled in August 2003 by since-purged Prime Minister Khin Nyunt.

"We have to draft the National Constitution and then we have to make a referendum and after that we will make free and fair elections," Nyan Win said. He made no mention of timeframes or of Suu Kyi.

Thai Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon, who was among the chorus of Asean officials praying Yangon's generals would stand aside, said he took Myanmar's assurances to mean that Suu Kyi would be released in 2006.

"Asean and the international community would expect that Suu Kyi be released during the critical year," Kantathi said.

- REUTERS