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For exiled PM only China and India can end Burma’s crisis

Sein Win, cousin of Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, wants to visit Beijing and New Delhi to talk to government authorities, key allies of Myanmar’s brutal military regime, but has failed so far because the two Asian powers are afraid to compromise relations with the junta.
Washington (AsiaNews) – The solution to Myanmar’s crisis goes through China and India, Burmese prime minister in exile Sein Win told The Irrawaddy newspaper For this reason he wants to visit leaders in India and China—key allies of the military government—to seek their help in resolving the current political deadlock in Burma. Although he has approached both India and China in this regard, he has had no success so far.

The two Asian powers “are very elusive because they are afraid any contact with us could jeopardise their relationship with the military,” said Sein Win, who is a cousin of Burmese leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is under house arrest.

Too many interests are at stake: energy, natural resources, and weapons.

Since 1990, when Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the elections, her supporters have been jailed or forced into exile, whilst Mr Sein he was elected the head of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB). Still he has not been able to visit China or India.

For quite some time Sein Win has been asking the world’s largest democracy to let his government-in-exile to move in India, but his requests have fallen on deaf ears.

All that India has done is urge the parties to engage in a dialogue.

For its part China, so generous in aid to Sichuan earthquake victims, continues to block every initiative in the UN Security Council against Myanmar, guilty of mass murder for all intents and purposes for its response to cyclone Nargis

In fact Mr Sein is not at all surprise that the junta is limiting access by foreign aid workers to the area struck by the natural disaster. Conversely, he is dismayed by the fact that the junta has discouraged Burmese volunteers and private citizens from helping refugees.

Two months since the catastrophe the regime released an official tally, which reports 84,537 dead, 53,836 missing and 19,359 wounded.