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On
Myanmar, UN Official Predicts
April 18 Ban Visit, US Softens Too, Gas as Lubricant
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
March 16 -- On Myanmar, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is actively arranging a visit for just
after the
April 12 ASEAN meeting, most probably on April 18, a senior UN official
told
Inner City Press on Monday night. The official painted a rosy picture
of recent
actions by the military government of General Than Shwe, from his
belated
softening on the Muslim Rohingya population to his government's
engagement with
Indonesia on this refugee issue. The news on Myanmar is good, the
official
said, mirroring a shift in United States policy under Barack Obama.
As Inner
City Press reported from Washington last week, sources in the White
House say
that lobbying by the U.S. oil and gas industries has played a role in
the
Administration's signals that economic sanctions haven't been working
in
Myanmar, that it's time for more engagement -- read, U.S. business
entry. The question on Ban Ki-moon, these
sources say,
is whether a visit by him can be accompanied by enough face-saving
concessions
by Than Shwe to allow everyone to make money.
Myanmar's Than Shwe: "come to papa," in April
The UN's
spin of good news from Myanmar runs counter to a recent report on that
military
government's performance in the aftermath of last year's Cyclone
Nargis. A Johns
Hopkins report called for referral of Than Shwe and his senior
officials to the
International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. While some
thought
the indictment of Sudan's president might make referral of Myanmar more
likely,
the trend appears quite the opposite.
"If
you can't beat them, join them," appears to be the UN's approached to
Myanmar. Or at least, "visit them." Watch this site.
Footnotes: The
above-quoted UN official, left
nameless in an abundance of respect, spoke at a surreal reception
Monday night
to commemorate the 1988 massacre by gas of Kurds in Halabja. The
reception,
sponsored by Iraq's Mission to the UN, features smoked salmon and jumbo
shrimp
on ice, as well as liquor as more than one reported noted. The Kurds
are not
fanatics, said one correspondent long stationed there, wondering if one
day
9/11/01 will be celebrated like this, or even by mall sales. One trusts that Burma's 8/8/88 will never be
similarly toasted, despite the plentiful shrimp along the coast.
Click here for Inner City
Press March 12 UN (and AIG
bailout) debate
Click here for Inner City
Press' Feb 26 UN debate
Click
here
for Feb.
12 debate on Sri Lanka http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17772?in=11:33&out=32:56
Click here for Inner City Press' Jan.
16, 2009 debate about Gaza
Click here for Inner City Press'
review-of-2008 UN Top Ten debate
Click here for Inner
City Press' December 24 debate on UN budget, Niger
Click here from Inner City Press'
December 12 debate on UN double standards
Click here for Inner
City Press' November 25 debate on Somalia, politics
and this October 17 debate, on
Security Council and Obama and the UN.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
UN
Office: S-453A, UN, NY 10017
USA
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718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available
in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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