MANILA: Southeast Asia’s top diplomats were meeting Monday to appoint a special envoy to help deal with the political crisis and violence gripping Myanmar and finalize an emergency plan to help control a coronavirus outbreak that many fear is spiraling out of control in the military-ruled nation.
The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were also expected to announce after their video meeting some progress in four years of painstakingly slow negotiations with China to craft a nonaggression pact aimed at preventing conflict in the disputed South China Sea.
The 10-nation bloc, frequently dismissed by critics as an ineffective talk shop, has been under increasing international pressure to act on the troubles unfolding in Myanmar, an ASEAN member where the military in February toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The grouping, however, is hamstrung by its policy of noninterference in the domestic affairs of member nations as well as its requirement to reach a consensus among members.
In Monday’s online meeting the ministers were to decide who among at least three nominees from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia should be designated as the bloc’s special envoy to try to broker a settlement between the country’s ruling generals and rival parties led by Suu Kyi, a Southeast Asian diplomat told the Associated Press.
Myanmar prefers the candidate from Thailand, former Thai ambassador to Yangon Virasakdi Futrakul, but it remains uncertain when its military leaders would decide to accept the envoy and if access to Suu Kyi, who has been detained with other political leaders and put on trial for a slew of charges, would be granted, said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of lack of authority to discuss the issue publicly.
More than 900 people have been killed by Myanmar authorities since the February takeover, according to a tally kept by the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Casualties are also rising among the military and police as armed resistance grows in both urban and rural areas.
ASEAN leaders met in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta in April and called for an end to the violence and the start of a dialogue among contending parties to be mediated by an ASEAN envoy.
On Sunday, Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing repeated his pledge to hold fresh elections in two years and cooperate with ASEAN on finding a political solution. He said without elaborating that Myanmar “is ready to work on ASEAN cooperation within the ASEAN framework, including the dialogue with the ASEAN special envoy in Myanmar.”
Myanmar’s troubles have deepened with its worst surge of the pandemic, which has overwhelmed its crippled health care system. Limits on oxygen sales have led to widespread allegations that the military is directing supplies to government supporters and military-run hospitals.
In Monday’s meeting, the ASEAN ministers were to looking to finalize a plan to bring in medicine and medical equipment to Myanmar through the regional bloc’s disaster-response center with the military leaders’ approval.
Greg Poling, an analyst on Southeast Asia for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said it’s critical for ASEAN to gain humanitarian access in Myanmar but added that the aid would not automatically mean the military leaders would accede to the bloc’s political demands.
“ASEAN has no leverage with the junta,” Poling said.
In addition to Myanmar, the other ASEAN members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The ministerial meetings this week include the ASEAN Regional Forum, a security conference where North Korea attends along with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
ASEAN diplomats discussing crisis envoy, aid to Myanmar
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ASEAN diplomats discussing crisis envoy, aid to Myanmar
- The 10-nation bloc has been under increasing international pressure to act on the troubles unfolding in Myanmar
Russia slams Western peacekeeping plan for Ukraine
- “The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Zakharova
- She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive“
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday slammed a plan for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as “dangerous” and dubbed Kyiv and its allies an “axis of war,” dousing hopes the plan could be a step toward ending the almost four-year-war.
US President Donald Trump has been pushing the warring sides to strike a deal to halt the conflict, running shuttle diplomacy between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a bid to get an agreement across the line.
An initial 28-point plan which largely adhered to Moscow’s demands was criticized by Kyiv and Europe, and now Russia has slammed the attempts to beef-up protections for Ukraine should an elusive deal be reached.
Ukraine’s allies said they had agreed key security guarantees for Kyiv at a summit in Paris earlier this week, including a peacekeeping force.
But in its first comments since the summit, Moscow said the statements were far away from anything the Kremlin could accept to end its assault.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive.”
The remarks come as Russian strikes plunged hundreds of thousands in Ukraine into darkness, leaving families without heat in below-freezing temperatures — attacks that Zelensky said showed Russia was still set on war.
- ‘Legitimate military targets’ -
European leaders and US envoys announced earlier this week that post-war guarantees for Ukraine would include a US-led monitoring mechanism and a European multinational force to be deployed when the fighting stops.
But Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would not accept any NATO members sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces,” Zakharova said Thursday, repeating a threat previously uttered by Putin.
Zelensky also said Thursday that a bilateral agreement between Kyiv and Washington for US security guarantees was “essentially ready for finalization at the highest level with the President of the United States” following talks between envoys in Paris this week.
Kyiv says legally-binding assurances that its allies would come to its defense are essential to convince Russia not to re-attack if a ceasefire is reached.
But specific details on the guarantees, the European force, and how it would engage have not been made public.
Zelensky said earlier this week he was yet to receive an “unequivocal” answer of what they would do if Russia does attack again after a deal.
Zelensky has also said that the most difficult questions in any settlement — territorial control of the eastern Donbas region and the fate of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — were still unresolved.
- Russian strikes cut heating -
Ukraine was meanwhile scrambling to restore heating and water to hundreds of thousands of households after a new barrage targeted energy facilities in its Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“This is truly a national level emergency,” Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipropetrovsk’s capital Dnipro, said on Telegram.
He announced power was “gradually returning to the hospitals” after the blackouts forced them to run on generators. The city authorities also extended school holidays for children.
About 600,000 households in the region remained cut off from power in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said.
In a post on social media, Zelensky said the attacks “clearly don’t indicate that Moscow is reconsidering its priorities.”
In addition to the unrelenting pummelling of Dnipropetrovsk, Russia pressed on with its ground assault on the region, claiming to have taken another village there.
It is not one of the five Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.
