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Australia to take a stand on Burma. (r)
- Subject: Australia to take a stand on Burma. (r)
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:54:00
Subject: AUSTRALIA TO TAKE A STAND ON BURMA THE AGE 28/7
Australia to take a stand on Burma
By LINDSAY MURDOCH,
international affairs correspondent,
Canberra
The Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, plans to
take his
toughest stand yet against Burma's military
dictators in a meeting
with a senior official of the junta in Kuala Lumpur
today.
Officials in Canberra said Mr Downer will tell
Burma's Foreign
Minister, Mr Ohn Gyaw, that the country's admission
this week
into the regional group, the Association of
South-East Asian
Nations, carries with it a responsibility to improve
its record on
human rights and personal freedoms.
Burma and Laos officially joined ASEAN at its annual
meeting in
Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday while Cambodia's entry has
been
delayed because of this month's coup.
Mr Downer will insist at today's meeting that
Burma's junta,
which is officially called the State Law and Order
Restoration
Council, include representatives of the National
League for
Democracy run by the pro-democracy leader Ms Aung
San Suu
Kyi in a commission set up to prepare a new
constitution.
Mr Downer's approach has been to be diplomatic and
guarded
about raising human rights and other contentious
issues with
Asian countries.
But an official said yesterday Mr Downer planned to
send "a
very clear message to Burma that its behavior on
human rights is
unacceptable" and would tell Mr Ohn Gyaw that Ms Suu
Kyi,
whose party won 1991 elections but was not allowed
to take
office, "must play a central role in discussions
about how the
constitutional process develops".
Mr Downer insisted on seeing Mr Ohn Gyaw ahead of a
dinner
tonight of representatives of 21 countries attending
the ASEAN
Regional Forum which was set up three years ago as
the central
plank of Asia's security architecture.
The forum is scheduled to discuss Burma during its
one-day
meeting on Sunday. Officials say the US Secretary of
State, Ms
Madeleine Albright, will press ASEAN to play a
greater role in
Burma.