October 11, 2007
The U.N. Security Council on Thursday issued its first formal censure of Burma's military rulers, saying it "strongly deplores" the junta's recent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators who flooded into the streets of Rangoon and other cities last month in a protest over fuel prices that became a pro-democracy movement.
The Security Council statement, which called on Burma's rulers to release all political prisoners, was mild compared with expressions of international outrage that followed the junta's bloody crackdown on protesters. But it represented a significant departure for the 15-nation council, which had been blocked from weighing in on the country's political crisis by China, Russia and South Africa.
China and Russia, which have the power to veto Security Council actions, said they agreed to support Thursday's censure because it adds diplomatic muscle to Gambari's mediation efforts and outlines a road map for a peaceful political solution to Burma's crisis. The statement also calls on the government and its critics to take steps to ease tensions.
U.S. and European officials as well as pro-democracy campaigners said they had hoped for a tougher statement. But they said they were satisfied that the council had finally decided to take the government to task. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States would press for an even tougher response if Burma fails to comply with the council's requests. "We will not forget. We will not relent. We will persist until the situation is put on the right trajectory," he said.
While the council was meeting in New York, scholars, diplomats and exiled Burmese activists were gathered at a forum in Washington, and they described Burma's recent unrest as the beginning of a phase of change in the closed and totalitarian Southeast Asian nation. "Events of August and September are the beginning of transition. The breakthrough has come. I do think that the tectonic plates have shifted," said Priscilla A. Clapp, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Burma from 1999 to 2002.
During Thursday's event, organized by the U.S. Institute of Peace and Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, various speakers agreed that any transitional Burmese government would have to include members of the military junta. "It would be extremely difficult to have any kind of successful transition that did not include the military," Clapp said in an interview Thursday. "Some members must remain because they have had a major role in the last 45 years in holding Burma together. Any solution in the transition phase has to include them, with the hope that the turnover will produce leaders who are more enlightened."
Clapp said that most of the junta members' personal funds are stashed in banks in Singapore, which has tighter bank secrecy laws than Switzerland, and that some assets are probably in Hong Kong. She said the top 14 junta leaders and their families were on a list of individuals who would have their accounts monitored.
On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch urged the Security Council to impose and enforce a mandatory arms embargo on Burma. "It is time for the Security Council to end all sales and transfers of arms to a government that uses repression and fear to hang on to power," said Brad Adams, the group's Asia director. India appears to be one of the two main suppliers of advanced weaponry to the Burmese military, Human Rights Watch said. The other is China.
India is preparing to send aircraft, artillery, tanks, ships, armored personnel carriers and small arms to Burma and has offered to sell it advanced light helicopters, which could be used against demonstrations.
