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Philippine FM says sanctions on Mya



Philippine FM says sanctions on Myanmar will not work
Mon 17 Aug 98 - 07:52 GMT 

MANILA, Aug 17 (AFP) - Threats of Western trade sanctions against Myanmar
will not work to resolve the conflict in Yangon, Philippine Foreign
Secretary Domingo Siazon said Monday.

Siazon said getting involved at the moment would only be senseless
"political posturing" that would highten the tension in Myanmar, where
Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Monday began the sixth day of a
roadside standoff with the country's junta.



He said the problem in Yangon was "a test of wills" between the opposition
leader and the ruling junta that could be best solved by an "internal
domestic process."



"You don't really want to get in there and be involved (because) you are
not going to solve it," Siazon told foreign journalists here.



"This time its a different phase of the game ... we want to be involved in
a serious attempt to bring national reconciliation not in political
posturing exercises," he said.



He said "economic sanctions do not work" and the best way to deal with
Myanmar was through negotiating with its government through ASEAN, citing
the release of 18 activists last week as an example.



"Someone has to deal with them, talking with them all the time," Siazon
said. "The non-ASEAN countries are not inside the house so they have to
shout to be heard, ASEAN countries are inside and we just whisper (to each
other) and we know our problems."



The junta has said it was doing everything possible to maintain Aung San
Suu Kyi's health and security after barring her from travelling to meet
supporters in a provincial centre last Wednesday.



A foreign correspondent visiting Myanmar told AFP he had been stopped at a
checkpoint near the site of the stand-off, a small bridge linking a highway
to adjacent rice paddies about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from Yangon.



A similiar standoff at the same bridge last month ended when she was
forcibly driven back to Yangon.



The Association of Southeast Asian Nations groups Brunei, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.



He said Washington's sending of a special envoy to lobby for the release of
the foreign activists never would have worked if ASEAN members had not
interceded.



ASEAN members "have a better ability to engage (Myanmar) and to have very
good talks and make constructive suggestions," he said.



"If Myanmar had not been a member of ASEAN today, you would still have 18
people serving five years of hard labor there, I guarantee you that,"
Siazon said.



The activists were rounded up while handing out pamphlets urging people to
remember the 10th anniversary of a bloody military crackdown on
pro-democracy demonstrators on August 8, 1988.



The detainees, six US nationals, three Thais, three Malaysians, three
Indonesians, two Filipinos and one Australian, were sentenced to five years
hard labor last week but the sentences were immediately suspended and they
were deported.



Siazon advised western countries to be patient while ASEAN members were
undergoing reforms, noting that changes in "systems and political
processes" should come from individual countries and not through
international pressure.



"It's not trying to change Myanmar from outside in, you have to change the
country from within. It's the people themselves who have to take this
initiative," he said.



ASEAN was criticized by the United States and the West last year for
admitting Yangon into the group despite the human rights record of the
ruling junta.