Myanmar Leader Affirms No-Nuke Stance. Print Share Email Twitter Facebook LinkedIn The president of Myanmar on Sunday reaffirmed his position that the nation would never seek nuclear weapons, Kyodo News reported. There have been suspicions that the military junta that governed Myanmar for decades had begun some basic work toward a nuclear-weapon capability, possibly with assistance from North Korea. Those worries appear to have eased following Myanmar's 2011 move from the junta government to a formally democratic leadership. "We don't really have the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
We don't have money. He added: "But I can say there is no military relationship since the new government came to power, only diplomatic relations. " Thein Sein met on Monday with President Obama . PacNet #40 - Burma/Myanmar: The Folly of Consistency. By David I. Steinberg If US sanctions against the military government in Burma/Myanmar, the goal of which was regime change, have not worked for a decade and a half, by what logic would one suppose that additional sanctions would have a more positive effect? Yet well-meaning human rights and other organizations have recently proposed that further sanctions be instituted and that a UN Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations be convened.
This proposal is especially quixotic as the EU has just modestly modified its less stringent sanctions policy in the light of potential progress in that country, and none of the Asian states adheres to any sanctions regimen. Rather than being a step forward, this proposal undercuts both US policy and the potential for positive change in Myanmar. That the Congress and the White House will extend current sanctions policies is a given, as Burma/Myanmar is not an issue about which any administration is willing to use up political ammunition. Western Sanctions Aren't Working. Burma and Libya: The politics of inconsistency. Andrew Selth is a Research Fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute and author of Burma and Nuclear Proliferation: Policies and Perceptions. Lord Palmerston said nearly 200 years ago that countries have no eternal allies or perpetual enemies, only eternal and perpetual interests.
Whether or not this is true, one always looks in vain for consistency in the conduct of international relations. Burma-watchers have been reminded of this fact by the world's decisive response to developments in Libya. In February, the UN Security Council effectively invoked the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P) doctrine to justify military intervention in Libya. The UNSC referred the Libyan case to the International Criminal Court and the UN Human Rights Council endorsed an International Commission of Inquiry. President Obama later stated that 'left unchecked, we have every reason to believe that Gaddafi would commit atrocities against his own people. Photo by Flickr user lewishamdreamer. Blog Archive » Is Aung San Suu Kyi Going Back to Jail? Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi speaks with youths at the National League for Democracy (NLD) head office in Yangon February 8, 2011.
(Soe Zeya Tun/Courtesy Reuters) Speaking with a number of Burmese political analysts over the past month, I have repeatedly heard an unsettling conclusion – one that the military’s latest actions make even more likely. Nearly all of them agree that, by the end of this year, the Burmese regime is likely to put Aung San Suu Kyi back under house arrest. This would mark the continuation of a pattern: The regime has released and then detained Suu Kyi over and over during the past two decades.
Though it’s impossible to predict anything for sure in Burma, many of the signs of a hardening political climate are there, and noted today in brief in the New York Times. With investment booming and some legitimacy, the regime needs Suu Kyi less and less. CFR seeks to foster civil and informed discussion of foreign policy issues. NTI: Global Security Newswire - Myanmar Denies Nuclear Program t.