EUROPEAN COMMISSION BURMA/MYANMAR CONFERENCE 2005... "I am grateful to the organizers of this conference for the invitation to make this presentation on challenges and opportunities for macroeconomic policy dialogue with Myanmar. I must confess that this is a somewhat humbling task, as the track record for decades has by and large been dismal. And I am afraid that we need to admit that a meaningful dialogue on economic policies has never been a high priority either for the government or, honestly speaking, for the democracy movement or the international community. I do believe that a hard look at the past is needed to face up to these realities, and that for the sake of the 50 million people who live in Myanmar, we need to try our best to find a way to stimulate fresh ideas and ways to promote cooperation on economic policy matters. What I would like to do to frame our discussion this afternoon, is first to try to draw some lessons from the initiatives that were taken over the past 15 years, then to make the case why economic policy dialogue should be given high priority now, and finally to suggest some approaches that might be pursued. I hope that this might contribute to the discussions underway in the European Commission about future engagement strategy..."