UK's Secretary

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Foreign & Commonwealth Office - News
FATCHETT INTERVIEWED ON BURMA	

((BBC RADIO INTERVIEW WITH FOREIGN & COMMONWEALTH OFFICE 
MINISTER OF STATE DEREK FATCHETT --SATURDAY, 8 AUGUST '98))
 
INTERVIEWER: Mr. Fatchett, what do you see as the way forward for Burma now?

MR FATCHETT: Certainly to maintain the international pressure.  We very
much support Aung San Sun Kyi's comments that the only way forward for
Burma is through democracy and through respect for human rights so, along
with our international colleagues, we will be using whatever pressure we
can on the Burmese regime to make sure that there is a movement towards
democracy.

INTERVIEWER: Will that include sanctions, because that is what Aung San Sun
Kyi and many in her party would like you to do?

MR FATCHETT: The British Government is ahead of virtually everybody else in
this respect because we have already taken action to stop using Government
money - taxpayers' money - to promote trade with Burma; we are already
giving advice to British companies to discourage them from trading and
investing in Burma and we are also giving advice to British tourists on the
human rights situation there and asking them to think again.

All of these measures are working effectively.  There has been a very
significant drop in trade with Burma since last year - now only 14 million
pounds on an annualized basis - so Britain has taken the lead there.  We
are working on other measures which we would like to put to our European
Union colleagues to see if we can take a tougher coordinated European line.

INTERVIEWER: You say that you give people advice but that of course is not
the same as stopping people from investing and we are way behind America in
this - they have actually outlawed investment.  Just after the general
election, you said that Britain would impose sanctions on Burma on our own
without waiting for the rest of Europe.  What has happened to that?

MR FATCHETT: I think we have imposed those sanctions, those are the
measures to which I have just referred.  There are no European-wide
economic sanctions and we have not been able to get European-wide consensus
on this issue.  But we are looking for other measures we can put to our
European colleagues to toughen-up our response.

There is no doubt, incidentally, across Europe of the very strong support
for the pro-democracy movements in Burma.  I was in Manila last week at the
meeting of the South East Asian countries and the European Union countries
- ourselves, Austria, Germany - joined in with the United States and others
to deliver a very strong message to the Burmese Foreign Minister.  So
Europe's position is strong. What we need to do is to look at other
measures which can strengthen that position in terms of the response.

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