AFP-Special EU mission leaves Myanm

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Subject: AFP-Special EU mission leaves Myanmar quietly

Special EU mission leaves Myanmar quietly
BANGKOK, July 8 (AFP) - A special European Union mission has left
military-run Myanmar without briefing local diplomats on their efforts to
open a human rights dialogue with the junta, envoys said Thursday.
A cloak of secrecy has decended on the two days of sensitive talks which saw
the four-man mission meet opposition leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi and
powerful junta First Secretary Khin Nyunt.

Representing Finland, Portugal, the EU secretariat and the European
Commission, the EU team was trying to pave the way for the resumption of a
political and human rights dialogue between Europe and Myanmar.

Diplomats said it would also propose talks between the military authorities
and Aun San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won
1990 elections only to be denied power by the junta.

"They wish first to report to the EU working committee and they don't want
to jump the gun, so to speak," Finnish ambassador to Thailand Tauno Kaaria
told AFP.

"They have left already and I don't think they had a briefing for
diplomats."

A British diplomat in Yangon said the past two days had been "exhausting."

"The atmosphere was cordial and there was an exchange of information on both
sides," she said.

But she said any more details of the success or failure of the mission could
take "a long time" to come back from the working committee in Brussels.

The US State Department on Wednesday backed the EU's team, saying it
expected the talks to focus on human rights.

"We support the discussions by the special European mission, which has
arrived in Burma (Myanmar) for talks intended to encourage Burma to improve
its dismal human rights performance," spokesman James Foley said.

Washington "has longed urged Burmese authorities to begin a real,
substantive dialogue with the National League for Democracy, including Aung
San Suu Kyi, and leaders of Burma's ethnic minority groups leading to a
peaceful democratic transition.

"Our understanding is that the purpose of the mission is to focus on human
rights and ... the ongoing political standoff between the government and the
opposition."

Although both have imposed sanctions against the junta, Washington and
Brussels have clashed previously over how to deal with Yangon, which is
accused of serious human rights abuses including rape and torture.

The Europeans at one point petitioned the World Trade Organization over a
Massachusetts state law intended to penalize corporations that do business
in the Southeast Asian country.

Political dialogue between the junta and the EU has been on ice since the EU
imposed sanctions in 1996, a move condemned in Yangon as neo-colonial
interference.

The human rights situation has also tested the EU's ties with the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Myanmar joined two
years ago.