US wants issue of Burma put on Security Council agenda

By Mark Turner and Amy Kazmin
September 2, 2006
The Financial Times
Original Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/1f0cd51e-3a1f-11db-90bb-0000779e2340.html

The US yesterday called on the United Nations Security Council to put the situation in Burma on its formal agenda, in Washington's latest attempt to raise international pressure on the regime.
John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, said he had written a letter requesting the move to the incoming Greek presidency of the Council, and claimed he had sufficient support to force the issue if it came to avote. We think that it is time the Council faces up to its responsibilities, he said. He was not, however, proposing a UN resolution.
Russia, which alongside China and others has resisted even informal discussion in the past, immediately dismissed the move. It doesn't belong there, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations. It is not a threat to international peace and security.
But Mr Bolton said it posed a threat for a number of reasons, including drug trafficking, refugee flows and human rights violations, which had consequences with international implications.
International frustration with Burma's military rulers, even in Asia, has grown sharply since May when the junta rebuffed a direct appeal from Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, and extended the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize winning pro-democracy leader, for another year.
Of late, even members of the Association of South East Asian Nations - which previously defended the regime and urged western governments to be patient with Burma's generals - have openly and sharply expressed dismay at the junta's recalcitrance, and lack of any progress towards meaningful political reform over the last decade.
Malaysia, which sponsored Burma's entry into Asean in 1997, even recently called on China and India, which have strong ties to the generals, to use their clout to push for greater reforms and democratisation.
The generals, who recently relocated the capital from Rangoon to a remote town in central Burma, publicly maintain that they are preparing for the establishment of what they call a disciplined democracy with efforts to complete the drafting of a long pending national constitution.
But critics say the constitutional drafting convention, which has been in recess for months, is a shamwithout the participation of Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won a landslide election victory in 1990, but was barred from ever taking power.
While Burma is subject to a range of economic sanctions - including a US ban on all imports from the country - and the overall economy is stagnating, the junta's financial position has been strengthened by revenues from the sale of natural gas to Burma's energy hungry neighbours.
China, India and Thailand are all vying to secure more of Burma's vast quantities of natural gas to fuel their own power-hungry economies.