News & Articles on Burma-Friday, 10 December, 2010

News & Articles on Burma
Friday, 10 December, 2010
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NLD Leadership 'Sclerotic': US Embassy
Burma 'building nuclear and missile sites'
China's dim view of Myanmar junta
Myanmar's Suu Kyi, US official discuss sanctions
Suu Kyi discusses sanctions with US official
Wikileaks: North Korea 'helps Burma with nuclear sites'
China tired of Burma’s ‘foot-dragging’
Senior US envoy meets with Myanmar's Suu Kyi
Burma ‘fourth biggest jail’ for journalists
Multi-ethnic Burma and the junta will collide
US ‘given uranium’ by Burmese civilian
Ceasefire armed groups "thank" Burma Army for bringing them back to reality
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NLD Leadership 'Sclerotic': US Embassy
By BA KAUNG Friday, December 10, 2010

Burma's main pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is estranged from both the younger generation of political activists and ethnic minority groups and lacks public support despite the immense popularity of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, according to a US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks.

The scathing criticism of the party's senior leadership was directed at its failure to actively work with 88 Generation Students leaders in 2007, when Buddhist monks led anti-government protests.

“Repeated overtures from and 'summits' with the leaders of the 88 Generation in 2007 failed to result in any significant cooperation between the factions,” the cable said, adding that although Suu Kyi remained a popular and beloved figure among most Burmese, this status is not enjoyed by her party.

“Already frustrated with the sclerotic leadership of the elderly NLD 'Uncles,' the party lost even more credibility within the pro-democracy movement when its leaders refused to support the demonstrators last September, and even publicly criticized them,” wrote Leslie Hayden, the political and economic affairs chief of the US embassy in Rangoon, in her report in July 2008.

During the 2007 monk-led protests, the party leadership, which was then under the control of controversial NLD Chairman Aung Shwe, remained aloof from the protests. Aung Shwe and a few other top leaders were known for their extremely cautious approach towards the regime.

In contrast with the party's majority, which boycotted last month's election, these leaders reportedly wanted to participate in it.

Instead of reaching out to technically sophisticated bloggers and young, Internet-savvy activists, “the Uncles spend endless hours discussing their entitlements from the 1990 elections and abstract policy which they are in no position to enact,” the cable said.

“Additionally, most MPs-elect show little concern for the social and economic plight of most Burmese, and therefore, most Burmese regard them as irrelevant,” it said.

Party sources said that the release in late 2008 of Win Tin, a founding member of the NLD and an outspoken critic of the regime, reinvigorated the party. They also said that since the party decided in March of this year to boycott the election, the party's “Uncles” have stopped attending party meetings.

The party has been disbanded for its failure to register to participate in the election, and last month the Supreme Court rejected Suu Kyi's bid to restore the party's legal status.

Since her release from detention last month, Suu Kyi has been actively engaged in talks with different opposition groups, including with ethnic leaders.

But the US diplomatic cable noted that the party has repeatedly missed opportunities to reach out to the armed ethnic cease-fire groups and also continually feuded with ethnic leaders on the Committee to Represent the People's Parliament, an umbrella group of political and ethnic groups that won in the 1990 election.

“The party has consistently issued statements calling for a dialogue between the NLD and regime first, before the ethnic cease-fire groups are brought into the mix,” the cable noted.

The cable also recommended that the US should consider putting security guarantees on the table for the most senior generals and their families if it is serious about removing them from the scene. It also said the US should reach out to progressive military leaders in the regime directly, instead of relying on intermediaries who sometimes garble messages.

But Hayden rejected the idea that internal divisions might bring the regime down.

“Rumors of splits at the top of the regime are the result of uninformed analysis and wishful thinking of the exiles and outside observers. While the senior generals may disagree from time to time amongst themselves . . . they follow the orders of [Snr-Gen] Than Shwe. The senior generals are keenly aware that if they do not stand together, they will fall together.”
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=20291
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Burma 'building nuclear and missile sites'

12/10/2010 - 7:35:33 AM



Witnesses in Burma have seen missile and nuclear sites being built in remote locations with support from North Korea, according to the latest US cables released by WikiLeaks.

A Burmese officer in an engineering unit claimed surface-to-air missiles and an underground facility were being built at a site 300 miles north west of Rangoon, the documents published by The Guardian said.

The cable read: “The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is ”500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above“.

An estimated 300 North Koreans were working at the site, the document said, although it was suggested this number was probably too high.

Other reports, dating over the past six years, suggest dockworkers and foreign businessmen had heard about nuclear sites.

One businessman told the US Embassy in Rangoon that he had heard rumours of a nuclear reactor being built.

The cables add to long-standing fears that the Burmese military junta is trying to build a nuclear facility.
http://www.eecho.ie/news/world/burma-building-nuclear-and-missile-sites-485118.html
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ASIA TIMES: Dec 11, 2010
China's dim view of Myanmar junta
By Simon Roughneen

BANGKOK - Newly released United States diplomatic cables show that in the months after the August-September 2007 "Saffron" revolution protests in Myanmar, China was concerned about the country's stability and preferred that the military regime enter into dialogue with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic minority groups.

"The Chinese ambassador no longer tried to defend the regime, and acknowledged that the generals had made a bad situation worse. The Chinese have used their access to the generals to push for change, without much observable result, but remain interested in working with us to promote change," according to an account of a January 17, 2008 meeting between US charge d'affairs Shari Villaraos and China's ambassador to Myanmar, Guan Mu.

"The Chinese are clearly fed-up with foot-dragging by Than Shwe regime," Villarosa's report of the meeting concluded.

A lower-level meeting in Beijing took place a week earlier, on January 10 2008, and involved Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs Asia Department Counselor Yang Jian and politiburo-linked China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) Asia scholars Zhai Kun and Zhang Xuegang, along with three American officials.

While China and Vietnam have underpinned strong one-party rule with fast economic growth and investor-friendly policies - though recently Western multinationals have started to chafe at Chinese conditions - in China's view Myanmar's military junta failed to legitimize itself domestically due to its incompetent management of the economy, according to the Chinese assessments outlined in the US cable.

Gambits mentioned in WikiLeaked-cables from the US Embassy in Yangon, such as the creation of a "bread and circuses" domestic football league and rumors that Senior General Than Shwe, the junta's strongman, mulled a potential US$1billion bid for a majority stake in the Manchester United football club - apparently at the behest of his grandson - will only add to the perception of a regime at odds with economic realities beyond the self-enrichment of a narrow cabal of cronies.

According to the American account of the January 2008 meeting in Beijing, Zhai said the Myanmar government exerts control over society only on the surface and the potential for "lots of trouble" persists. He said the regime's inept handling of the economy costs it legitimacy and even if Myanmar's generals and Suu Kyi undertook a healthy dialogue, economic problems could throw the country into turmoil. Foreign affairs official Yang added that China's main reason for opposing Western sanctions on the Myanmar junta is that these could contribute to civil unrest inside the country, according to the Chinese view.

Scholar Zhang said that the US should "play two hands" with Myanmar's junta, advising the Americans that "the United States has been sufficiently critical of the regime and now should send messages, via China if necessary, to reassure Burmese military leaders that their personal security would not be imperiled in a democratic transition". Similarly, ambassador Guan suggested that that if junta leaders could be assured that "they would not lose their lives" and could retain economic interests, they might be amenable to a gradual concession of power.

To be sure, a measure of skepticism is required in reading the dated cables, however, with the real possibility that the Chinese representatives were, to a point at least, telling the Americans what they thought they wanted to hear. The status quo in Myanmar means that China, along with India, Thailand and others, has a relatively unhindered run at investing in resource-rich Myanmar, as Western countries and companies are hindered by US, European Union and Australian sanctions.

Whether the Americans bought into what they were told, or whether the cables were incorporated into ensuing higher-level Sino-American discussions on Myanmar, is hard to say. However, since the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009, Washington has made conciliatory gestures toward Myanmar's junta, including an offer to reassess sanctions in exchange for reforms - such as holding credible elections and the release of political prisoners - only to be rebuffed in turn.

Nuclear concerns
Zhang said that guaranteeing the safe future of the current military leadership is the key to "unlocking the deadlock", which in hindsight suggests that the drive to establish a United Nations-backed commission of Inquiry into whether war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Myanmar, a motion backed by the US, might have impelled the junta to batten down the hatches - if, indeed, the generals had ever contemplated any opening to begin with.

According to other cables released overnight by WikiLeaks, the US has since 2004 been concerned about Myanmar-North Korea military cooperation, which more recently has featured allegations that Myanmar is seeking nuclear weapons. Those worries have been exacerbated by revelations by American scientist Siegfried Hecker, who in early November reported that he was shown around a modern, sophisticated uranium enrichment facility in Yongbyon, previously unknown to outsiders by all accounts. It was a revelation that hints the technology Pyongyang could transfer to Myanmar is significantly more advanced than hitherto thought.

China's views on a potentially nuclear-armed Myanmar are not known, nor mentioned in the leaked US cables. However, Beijing's apparent and somewhat surprising views on ethnic relations in Myanmar are closer to Suu Kyi than those of junta leader Than Shwe. Since her November 13 release from house arrest, de facto opposition leader Suu Kyi has called for "a peaceful revolution" in Myanmar and for a second Panglong conference to address relations between the military government and the country's restive ethnic minority groups. Myanmar's state-run media has since dismissed the call for a convention.

Myanmar's civil wars have lasted since the end of World War II, with the 1962 military coup justified by apparent threats to national unity posed by the demands by ethnic minorities for some form of federal Burmese state. The original 1947 Panglong conference, chaired by Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, sought to address concerns that the newly-independent Burma, as Myanmar was then officially-known, would be dominated by ethnic Burmans at the expense of the country's 135 ethnic minority groups.

Almost three years old, China's views on Myanmar as expressed in the US cable might be somewhat different now, given a number of developments in the interim. According to the cable “Counselor Yang stated that the Chinese accept the Burmese regime's so-called 'roadmap' to democracy as the best route to democracy and national reconciliation in Burma.”

The November 7 elections in Myanmar were won by the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) in a predictable landslide, amid allegations of rigged advance voting, ballot stuffing and intimidation of rivals. China welcomed the elections as the fifth in Than Shwe's seven-step roadmap to democracy. However, with clashes between the Myanmar military and ethnic militias almost a daily occurrence since the election, and the junta reinforcing troop numbers in Kachin and Shan State, both bordering China, the junta could be set on a military solution to its demands that the country's ethnic militias merge their forces with the army.

An intensification of fighting in ethnic minority areas could impinge on Chinese economic interests in its southern neighbor, which as US diplomatic cables reveal is seen by Washington as on the verge of becoming a Chinese vassal. China's real views on the situation in Myanmar may become clearer if and when Myanmar's junta attempts to defeat the ethnic armies once and for all and instability rises on its southern flank.

The formation of a new post-election government and regional assemblies is predicted to take shape in mid-February 2011. Myanmar's junta could then try to justify an attack on "insurgents" - as it recently-labeled the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), in contrast to the previous "ceasefire group" categorization - by saying that a civilian government and regional autonomy has been granted and therefore groups such as the KIO have no legitimate reason to exist.

Simon Roughneen is a foreign correspondent. His website is www.simonroughneen.com. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/LL11Ae01.html
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Myanmar's Suu Kyi, US official discuss sanctions
The Associated Press
Friday, December 10, 2010; 5:36 AM

YANGON, Myanmar -- A senior U.S. official discussed sanctions against Myanmar's military government in talks Friday with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the first by a Washington official since recent elections and the release of the Nobel laureate from house arrest.

Joseph Y. Yun, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said the meeting with Suu Kyi at her lakeside home was "very productive."

"I learned a lot and I'll get back to Washington now to digest the three days of meetings here," he told reporters. During his visit, Yun also met Foreign Minister Nyan Win and other government officials, members of several political parties and U.N. representatives.

The visit came after Nov. 7 elections that were widely criticized as a sham to cement military rule.
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Suu Kyi was released after the elections from seven years of detention. Her National League for Democracy party did not take part in the balloting, and was disbanded by the government as a result.

Suu Kyi told reporters that she and Yun "discussed a number of issues including sanctions," but did not elaborate.

Bilateral ties have been strained since Myanmar's military crushed pro-democracy protests in 1988. Since then, Washington has been Myanmar's strongest critic, applying political and economic sanctions against its junta for its poor human rights record and failure to make democratic reforms.

Last year President Barack Obama reversed the Bush administration's policy of isolation of Myanmar, saying it had been largely ineffective, in favor of a dialogue with the junta in hopes of coaxing democratic change.

The U.S. has said it will maintain sanctions until concrete progress is made on democratic reforms.

Suu Kyi has been a vocal support of sanctions as a way to pressure the junta to come to an accommodation with the pro-democracy movement.

But in late 2009, she wrote to junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe stating her willingness to cooperate in having international sanctions eased - an apparent shift that was seen as a gesture toward reconciliation. She has been noncommittal on sanctions since her release last month, saying she would back their removal if Myanmar's people want them lifted.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121001311.html
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The Nation: 10 Dec. 2010, Friday
Suu Kyi discusses sanctions with US official

Rangoon - US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Yun on Friday discussed sanctions with recently released Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We talked of many things," Suu Kyi said of the meeting at her lakeside Rangoon home, which served as the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's prison for most of the past two decades. "We also discussed about sanctions, but I cannot tell you in detail."

Executive members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy opposition party also attended the meeting.

Suu Kyi, who was freed from her latest seven years of home detention on November 13, previously had stated that she was willing to review her support of Western economic sanctions on the country's military regime on the condition that only the ones that harm the public are lifted.
Yun, who arrived in Burma Tuesday, met with Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win, police chief Khin Yi and officials from the Science and Technology Ministry Thursday at the capital, Naypyitaw. //DPA
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/Suu-Kyi-discusses-sanctions-with-US-official-30144164.html
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10 December 2010 Last updated at 01:42 GMT
Wikileaks: North Korea 'helps Burma with nuclear sites'

Prime Minister Thein Sein Burma's military leaders have denied that the country is developing nuclear technology
Continue reading the main story

Burma may be building missile and nuclear sites in remote locations with support from North Korea, according to secret US cables released by Wikileaks.

The documents cite witnesses who say North Korean workers are helping Burma construct an underground bunker in a remote jungle.

The move underlines concern that the Burmese regime might be trying to build a nuclear weapon, despite denials.

Wikileaks has so far released more than 1,100 of 251,000 diplomatic cables.

The reports, which stretch over the past six years, suggest dockworkers and foreign businessmen have seen evidence of alleged sites.

A cable dating from August 2004 spoke of a Burmese officer in an engineering unit who said surface-to-air missiles were being built at a site in a town called Minbu in west-central Myanmar.

"The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above'," reads the cable, published by the Guardian newspaper.

Some 300 North Koreans were working at the site, the authors said, although the cable suggested this number was improbably high.
'Jigsaw of information'

An expatriate businessman also told the US Embassy in Rangoon that he had heard rumours of a nuclear site being built.

According to another cable, the businessman told an embassy officer about rumours of a large barge unloading reinforced steel which looked as if it was for a project larger than a factory.

Analysts have previously raised concerns that Burma is co-operating with North Korea to develop nuclear technology, although Burma has denied the claim.

The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus says that for months there have been persistent reports in the press and specialised journals suggesting that Burma is building a nuclear facility with North Korean help.

Those reports are mainly derived from clues pieced together from defectors and satellite imagery, he adds.

There is nothing in the cables to confirm what Burma and North Korea may be up to, but they do provide a fascinating insight into the jigsaw of information on which western intelligence is based, our correspondent says.

Another cable released by the whistle-blowing site suggests that China, Burma's most powerful ally, is growing impatient with the country's leaders.

Two years ago, Chinese Ambassador Guan Mu told US diplomats that there was a risk of turmoil in Burma.

He suggested that the country's ruling generals would cede power if they were offered assurances that they would not "lose their lives" and if they could keep their economic interests.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11966136
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China tired of Burma’s ‘foot-dragging’
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Published: 10 December 2010

Than Shwe [R] during a September meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao [L] (Reuters)

China is fed up with the “foot-dragging” of the military junta in Burma on reform and fears the ruling generals can no longer protect its interests in the country, leaked US diplomatic cables show.

China is a key supplier of arms to its southern neighbour and a buyer of its natural resources. It has also been the junta’s main ally on the international stage, but the secret cables released by WikiLeaks tell a different tale.

“The Chinese clearly are fed up with the foot-dragging by the Than Shwe regime,” the top US diplomat in Rangoon, Shari Villarosa, wrote in a January 2008 memo summarising a meeting with the Chinese ambassador at the time.

“The Chinese can no longer rely on the generals to protect their interests here, and recognise the need to broker some solution that keeps the peace,” she wrote, following mass street rallies in 2007 that ended in bloody violence.

“The Chinese ambassador no longer tried to defend the regime, and acknowledged that the generals had made a bad situation worse,” she said.

The cable added that after Chinese efforts to push for reform had ended “without much observable result”, Beijing was willing to work with the United States to get the generals back to the negotiating table.

Another cable from January 2008 from the US embassy in Beijing quoted a Chinese foreign ministry official as saying China wanted to see the junta take “bold measures” to improve the livelihood of Burma’s people.

The cable quoted the same official as saying China wanted to see “national reconciliation through dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and democracy supporters”.

The 65-year-old opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate, who spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, was released last month, days after a rare election that was widely panned by foreign observers as a sham.

The junta’s political proxy claimed an overwhelming victory in the elections – Burma’s first in two decades – amid opposition complaints of cheating and voter intimidation. Suu Kyi’s party boycotted the polls.

Burma has been ruled by the military since 1962 and has refused to recognise the results of elections in 1990 that Suu Kyi’s party won by a landslide.

Villarosa said the Chinese envoy to Rangoon, Guan Mu, said the generals might be “more amenable to ceding power gradually” if they were “offered assurances that they would not lose their lives and could keep their economic interests”.
http://www.dvb.no/news/china-tired-of-burmas-foot-dragging/13334
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Senior US envoy meets with Myanmar's Suu Kyi
AFP

A senior US diplomat met with Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during the first high-level visit by a Washington envoy since the dissident's release from house arrest last month. Skip related content
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Joseph Yun, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, made no comment to waiting media as he visited the Nobel Peace Prize winner at her crumbling lakeside mansion in Yangon on Friday.

Suu Kyi was freed by Myanmar's military rulers from her most recent stretch of detention on November 13, days after a rare election widely criticised by democracy activists and Western governments as anything but free and fair.

US President Barack Obama said Myanmar's "bankrupt regime" had stolen the vote, which handed an overwhelming majority to the military's political proxy and was marred by allegations of intimidation and vote rigging.

Obama's administration launched a dialogue with Myanmar's military rulers last year after concluding that Western attempts to isolate the regime had produced little success.

Yun arrived in the military-ruled country on Tuesday and has already met with representatives of 10 political parties that won seats in the November 7 election, as well as government officials.

The US envoy would urge the authorities to "improve their human rights record" and "release all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally", a US State Department spokesman said ahead of the talks.

"He will also review US government humanitarian assistance to the Burmese people," the official added, using Myanmar's former name.

Suu Kyi, who spent 15 of the last 21 years locked up, has welcomed this engagement but warned against "rose-coloured glasses", saying greater human rights and economic progress were still needed.

She told CNN in an interview last month that Washington must keep its "eyes open and alert and seeing what is really going on, and where engagement is leading to and what changes really need to be brought about".

Suu Kyi's party boycotted the November 7 vote because of rules that appeared to exclude the dissident from participating. It was subsequently disbanded by the junta.

The party won the previous election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.

Yun's visit coincided with the release of leaked diplomatic cables highlighting Washington's fears, dating back to 2004, of a secret nuclear programme in Myanmar with the involvement of North Korea.

One cable from the US embassy in Yangon, dated August 2004 and released Thursday by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, quoted an unidentified witness who reported seeing 300 North Koreans working at a secret construction site.

"The North Koreans, aided by Burmese workers, are constructing a concrete-reinforced underground facility that is '500ft from the top of the cave to the top of the hill above'," according to the cable.

The military junta in Myanmar has dismissed reports of its nuclear intentions and brushed aside Western concerns about possible cooperation with North Korea.

But in July US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed worries about military ties between the two countries saying a ship from Pyongyang had recently delivered military equipment to Myanmar. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20101210/twl-senior-us-envoy-meets-with-myanmar-s-2802f3e.html
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Burma ‘fourth biggest jail’ for journalists
By DVB
Published: 9 December 2010

Burma is the world’s fourth-highest jailer of media workers, according to figures released by a New York-based press safety watchdog.

Except for Eritrea, which is placed third with 17, Burma has one of the highest numbers of imprisoned journalists relative to its population. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) puts Burma’s figure at 13, while China and Iran each have 34.

The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide has risen by nine since last year and now stands at 145, a 14-year high, with 28 countries guilty of harsh treatment of media workers.

CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon called the increase a “shocking development… fuelled largely by a small handful of countries that systematically jail journalists –countries that are at war with information itself”.

The Thailand-based Burma Media Association (BMA) however puts the figure at 22, and among these are 17 DVB journalists. A father and son who were arrested in April after photographing the aftermath of the Rangoon bombings are the latest to have admitted to being DVB staff.

According to DVB Deputy Editor, Khin Maung Win, the son, 21-year-old Sithu Zeya, had been tortured into revealing that his father, Maung Maung Zeya, was also a reporter for the Oslo-based media organisation.

Khin Maung Win added that authorities had offered to free Maung Maung Zeya if he divulged the names of other undercover DVB reporters. The two are being held in Rangoon’s Insein prison while they await a verdict.

CPJ last year branded Burma as the ‘worst country to be a blogger’, while the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres ranked it 171 out of 175 countries in its latest Press Freedom Index.
http://www.dvb.no/news/burma-%E2%80%98fourth-biggest-jail%E2%80%99-for-journalists/13323
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Multi-ethnic Burma and the junta will collide
By MAUNG ZARNI
Published: 10 December 2010

No matter how carefully they tread on the issue of reviving the Union spirit among different ethnic communities, Aung San Suu Kyi and non-violent ethnic minority leaders – not to mention the armed ethnic resistance organisations – are heading for an inevitable collision course with Burma’s military junta. Here is why.

Their respective politics, as well as concerns and interests, are irreconcilable. For Suu Kyi and the multi-ethnic opposition, politics is a means towards peace, reconciliation, representative government and improved public well-being; for the ruling generals, however, it is an expression of entitlement to rule and a means of control, domination, and self-aggrandizement. The fact that Senior General Than Shwe even thought of buying out Manchester United football club while several million cyclone Nargis victims struggled for clean drinking water and dry shelter speaks volumes about the deeply callous nature of the generals that rule the country.

While the world knows plenty about Aung San Suu Kyi and what she represents, it knows almost nothing about the generals beyond their international pariah status.

As far as the generals are concerned, there is no need for reconciliation along ethnic or political lines with any person, organization or community. In short, they have done nothing wrong, for they perceive themselves as the country’s sole national guardian, untainted by partisan politics. They are committed to the abstract idea of a multi-ethnic nation and an absolutist notion of sovereignty. They love the country, but they can’t stand the people, especially the kind who refuse to go along with their design for the rest of the country.

The generals’ politics is all about resuming and completing the process of reconsolidation of the power of the ethnic Burmese majority, most specifically the soldiering class, over the rest of the ethnic minorities – a process only interrupted by the old kingdom’s 19th century defeat by Great Britain. Sixty years after independence the military has built its own version of local colonial rule wherein it serves as the constitutionally-mandated ruling class and the rest of the civilian society, both ethnic majority and minorities, as second class citizens.

In this new colonial rule, anything and anyone that doesn’t bend to the generals’ will is to be controlled, subjugated or crushed. Aung San Suu Kyi and 2,200-plus jailed multi-ethnic dissidents or politically defiant ethnic minority groups that are subject to rape, pillage, summary executions and other atrocities attest to this. And this time round the regime is likely to get really nasty, with disturbing signals of the brewing troubles ahead already emerging.

The world just witnessed 20,000 Burmese refugees fleeing the renewed, post-election fighting between the regime and a faction of Karen ethnic minority ceasefire groups into Thailand. Furthermore, the Burmese military has recently deployed massive numbers of combat-ready troops along vast stretches of the porous Thai-Burmese border and purchased and assembled 50 Russian-made Mi-24 gunship helicopters in preparation for “counterinsurgency” operations to subjugate the country’s minorities.

Burma has been engulfed in conflict, violent and non-violent, since 90 days after independence from Britain. Everyone is tired of war and conflict – that is, everyone except the top generals and those who profit from the continuation of war and conflict.

The military’s rose-tinted perception of itself as the ‘guardian of the nation’ is one thing, but the vested class and personal interests that have resulted from 50 years of successive military dictatorships are another. War may not be peace as Orwellian double-speak suggests, but it is highly profitable for the strong and the victorious.

Perpetuating domestic conflicts enables the regime to expand its military control over resource-rich and strategic minority regions which border Asia’s rising economies such as India, China and Thailand. The economically vibrant neighbours have signed multi-billion dollar commercial deals, including trans-border gas pipelines, two deep seaports, ‘development corridors’ and ‘special economic zones’, natural gas production, hydropower projects and mining, all over different minority lands along Burma’s national borders.

The regime’s opponents are incomparably weaker, outnumbered and outgunned. The regime discards such modern normative inconveniences as governmental accountability, citizens’ voice, and ecological and livelihood concerns, as it grabs natural resources and land from both ethnic majority and minority communities, while their Asian business partners look the other way. The troops are allowed to scavenge among local populations, confiscating anything of value with impunity from the top leadership. In fact, it is the senior and junior generals in Naypyidaw who push their regional, battalion and local commanders towards local economic self-sufficiency – at any cost to local communities and economies.

Ideologically, the war against minorities reinforces the Burmese military’s self-justificatory perception that its primacy and monopoly control over minority regions are necessary, lest these autonomy-seeking ethnic people break up the Union. However these days the Burmese public, weary of the governmental brutality and with greater exposure to global free media, is no longer susceptible to the regime’s ethno-nationalist propaganda. The glue that used to bind the Burmese majority with the militarist generals has come off.

Precisely because this ethno-nationalist bond has been irreparably broken down, Aung San Suu Kyi and minority leaders’ recent moves towards dialogue and reconciliation poses the greatest threat to the ruling junta. Only 20 years ago the regime, challenged by the majority Burmese public in Burma’s ‘people power’ uprising, opted for disparate ceasefire deals with nearly 20 armed minority organizations, not out of genuine desire for peace and reconciliation, but as a strategy to pre-empt the inter-ethnic solidarity between the Aung San Suu Kyi-led majority and rebellious minorities. Now that some of the most crucial ceasefires are likely to unravel, the highest strategic priority of the regime has become preventing inter-ethnic unity.

There is little wonder then that the generals’ greatest threat is Aung San Suu Kyi’s enduring popularity across ethnic lines and her politics of reconciliation. Her politics by no means induces the country’s balkanization as the generals and their supporters have implied. If anything, the military’s zero-sum politics will pave the way for national disintegration.

If one listens carefully to Burma’s disparate ethnic resistance groups, everyone is prepared to live within a single union. They are simply asking that fair political representation and ethnic equality be made central organizing principles of the Union – something the majority Burmese as represented by Aung San Suu Kyi and her opposition movement have endorsed.

Foreign governments and advocates generally view the military as the only cohesive national organization capable of keeping territorial Burma together, but they conveniently ignore the realities on the ground: Burma’s military has categorically failed at nation-building – its record of 50 years in power speaks for itself.

What the generals want and pursue is power and profit while their multi-ethnic opponents can only offer peace and reconciliation. Their respective missions are bound to collide, and it’s just a matter of time before the world witnesses a new round of confrontation, conflicts and crack down.

For the foreign governments and international organisations which fear Burma’s ethnic balkanization or political instability, the best way to prevent this eventuality is to start recognizing that the generals, this generation and the next, are not going to be the ones who will bring about lasting peace, reconciliation and stability. Instead of placing misguided confidence in gradual military-led transition, these external players should invest in long-term initiatives designed to help empower multi-ethnic dissidents and their organizations, as well as ordinary citizens and their communities in order that the people may succeed in their attempts at what Aung San Suu Kyi calls a ‘peaceful revolution’, a process of change that brings about meaningful, positive and radical changes in policy, leadership and institutions.

Maung Zarni is research fellow on Burma at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
http://www.dvb.no/analysis/multi-ethnic-burma-and-the-junta-will-collide/13337
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US ‘given uranium’ by Burmese civilian

Exerpt from the leaked US cable documenting approach by Burmese civilian with uranium (Wikileaks)
By FRANCIS WADE
Published: 10 December 2010

US diplomats in Rangoon were approached in 2008 by a Burmese civilian offering to sell a sample of uranium, which was then sent to a US testing centre, leaked cables reveal.

It comes as part of a massive disclosure of US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks that suggest the US was concerned about Burma’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon long before DVB unearthed evidence of a proliferation programme.

The unnamed person had contacted the US Defence Attaché Office (USDAO) in Rangoon eight days prior to the meeting, said the 23 September 2008 cable sent to Washington by US Chargé d’Affaires in Burma, Larry Dinger. No date of for the meeting is given, but the cable says that US officials interviewed the individual “at the U.S. Embassy Rangoon”.

It says that the “individual provided a small bottle half-filled with metallic powder and a photocopied certificate of testing from a Chinese university dated 1992 as verification of the radioactive nature of the powder”. He claimed the bottle contained Uranium-238, which is used in most modern nuclear weapons, as well as for nuclear energy.

The civilian reportedly told US diplomats that he could “provide up to 2000 kg of uranium-bearing rock” mined from a location in eastern Burma’s Karenni state. He claimed he had 50 kilograms of uranium-containing rock or ore stored in a protected barrel at an undisclosed Rangoon location. If the US declined the offer, then the individual would approach Thailand and China before moving on to other countries.

What happened next is unclear, but at the time the cable was sent, a sample bottle was “in transit” to a US testing site known as the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, Virginia. It was sent “by commercial air via Diplomatic Pouch”.

“The sample was wrapped in several layers and placed inside multiple containers, including glass, lead, and wooden boxes/crates”, the cable said, adding that the package was marked ‘Secret’.

As far as the USDAO knew, the Burmese junta was unaware that it had received the alleged uranium. “However, the possibility cannot be dismissed that rather than a sale for profit, the seller is attempting to assist in executing a government entrapment scheme,” it said.

Burmese analyst Aung Thu Nyein said that it is likely the individual had been paid by the US embassy to provide information about uranium deposits in Burma, in order that Washington could gauge the potential for the junta to develop a nuclear weapon.

Another cable sent on 30 January 2007 speaks of US suspicions about a shipment of 112 metric tonnes of uranium ore “shipped on January 25 from BURMA to China via Singapore”. It said that “security was tighter than usual, surveillance was heavier, and officials paid closer attention to the movement of the shipment and activity at the port”.

When approached by DVB, an official at the US embassy in Rangoon said that the US state department “does not comment on classified documents or allegedly classified documents that may have been leaked”.
http://www.dvb.no/news/us-%E2%80%98given-uranium%E2%80%99-by-burmese-civilian/13341
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Ceasefire armed groups "thank" Burma Army for bringing them back to reality
Friday, 10 December 2010 15:11 Hseng Khio Fah

Ceasefire armed groups that have refused to disarm to Burma's ruling military, during their recent informal meetings at Mongla, where the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) Headquarters is located, said they should be grateful to the Burma Army because its pressure on the groups to transform themselves into Border Guard Forces (BGFs) and later to disarm had brought them back to the struggle for their rights as enshrined in the 1947 Panglong Agreement, according to sources from the Sino-Burma border said.

Former allies of the Burma's ruling military, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), NDAA better known as Mongla group and Shan State Army (SSA) North took opportunity from Mongla's Shan New Year celebrations (held from 30 November to 7 December) to discuss their future strategies, an informed source said.

The groups said without the Burma Army's BGF program, they would not have woken up from their "Rip Van Winkle" sleep to resume their fight because they had been too busy with their day to day affairs.

"The junta might achieve its goal well within another 20 years, had they left us alone as in the past," a source quoted a Wa officer as saying.

According to one discussant, the ruling military is putting pressure on them on three fronts, 1) Militarily, the Burma Army is laying them under siege in an attempt to wear them down "If there is a chance to gain a quick victory, like in Kokang, they'll even attack". 2) Economically, the Burma Army is cutting off their revenue "Now only the militias that are backed by the Burma Army can engage in the drug trade freely" and 3) Politically, Naypyitaw is trying to "paint us with drugs" to isolate the groups from the international community; it might even place the issue of the groups in the parliamentary agenda in an attempt to legally designating them as unlawful organizations.

In response, the alliance cannot shoot first which is an action that may offend China. What they could do, obviously, is on the political front, according to another discussant. The Shans, as former rulers of Shan State and being the majority, should assume a major role. "The first thing is for the SSA-North and the (non-ceasefire) SSA-South to reach an agreement," he said. "The rest of us can then follow suit."

Meanwhile, the Shan State Army (SSA) South of Lt-Gen Yawd Serk was also reportedly holding meetings with representatives from the Six-State Military Alliance formed since 2002. Members include SSA South, Karen National Union, Karenni National Progressive Party, Kachin Independence Army, China National Front and Arakan Liberation Party. http://www.shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3359:ceasefire-armed-groups-qthankq-burma-army-for-bringing-them-back-to-reality-&catid=86:war&Itemid=284

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