Soldiers sit next to an armored vehicle outside a hotel during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Vientiane on October 8, 2024. | Photo credit: AFP
Myanmar will send a representative to a regional summit this week for the first time in three years, diplomatic sources said on Tuesday, as the junta struggles to quell the civil war.
The conflict will be high on the agenda when leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meet in Laos on Wednesday (October 9, 2024), despite more than three years of efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. impact.
ASEAN banned Myanmar’s junta leader from the summit after the February 2021 coup, and the generals refused to send “non-political representatives”.
However, Myanmar – one of 10 ASEAN member states – sent a senior foreign ministry official as a representative to the three-day meeting in Vientiane, said a Southeast Asian diplomat who attended the meeting.
Weeks after seizing power, the junta agreed to a “five-point consensus” plan aimed at restoring peace but later ignored it and carried out a crackdown on supporters and armed opposition to his government.
“The important thing is that they accept the five-point consensus,” the diplomat said AFP.
“They probably think it’s better to hear their own voice than to be outside.”
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing attended an emergency ASEAN summit on the crisis in April 2021, but the bloc refused to invite him to a regular meeting.
Aung Kyaw Moe, permanent secretary at Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, attended a meeting of foreign ministers on Tuesday ahead of the main summit but declined to answer reporters’ questions.
It sent representatives to the meeting two weeks after the military issued an unprecedented invitation to its enemies for talks aimed at ending the conflict, which has killed thousands and forced millions to flee their homes.
The junta has been reeling from defeats on the battlefield to ethnic minority armed groups and the pro-democracy “People’s Defense Forces” that rose up to fight the coup.
Indonesia hosted talks on the Myanmar conflict last week involving ASEAN, the European Union and the United Nations, as well as many anti-junta groups.
Malaysia took over as ASEAN chairman after the summit and foreign minister Mohamad Hasan said the Jakarta meeting showed that the talks should involve all parties in Myanmar.
“The takeaway is that we need to reach out to everyone in Myanmar. Myanmar also needs to listen to ASEAN,” he told reporters in Vientiane.
A call to action
ASEAN, long criticized as a nonsense shop unable to act decisively on the principle of consensus decision-making, has made little progress in its efforts to resolve the Myanmar crisis.
The topic has dominated every high-level meeting since the coup but the bloc has been divided, with Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines leading calls for tough action against the generals.
Myanmar’s neighbor Thailand, which regularly hosts thousands of people fleeing conflict and has held its own bilateral talks with the junta, has called for a more effective response from ASEAN.
The kingdom will host informal discussions on the crisis in December involving the “troika” of Indonesia, Laos and Malaysia, ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Horn told reporters.
“This is the so-called new meeting that will review the situation in Myanmar (to see) what else can be done,” he said.
China, Myanmar’s neighbor and key ally, confirmed on Tuesday that Prime Minister Li Qiang would also attend the summit.
Beijing is increasingly worried about the conflict on its doorstep and wants to see a deal, calling on Friday for “reconciliation led by all Myanmar people”.
The South China Sea will be another key topic for the leaders after months of violent confrontations between Chinese and Philippine ships in the disputed waterway.
Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, dismissing rival claims from several Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines, and international rulings that the claim has no legal basis.
New Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba will also attend, as will Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and leaders from South Korea, Australia and Canada.
Published – 08 October 2024 11:30 IST
