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Brown-Roth : failure of a diplomati



Subject: Brown-Roth : failure of a diplomatic mission : Opinion Euro-Burmanet

Opinion : The Failure of the Brown-Roth mission

The Clinton backed Brown-Roth fact-finding  mission appears now to have 
been more of a diplomatic effort to assure ASEAN solidarity behind the " 
constructive engagement  " plan in direct talks with the Asean 
authorities while sending two vital messages home to Rangoon, and to 
Washington. Brown and Roth have indicated that the White House will not 
push for sanctions, as long as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is not arrested. 
Therefore, Slorc has been cautioned to ease its repressive actions of the 
May and June crackdown, while prisoners of the NLD remain in jail. For 
Slorc, the message from the US diplomatic mission is clear -Business as 
usual. 

Brown has not talked to rebel groups, nor evidently has he read the 
SAIN/ERI report Total Denial, nor he report released Monday by the Karen 
National Union (KNU), which has been fighting the Burmese
government for autonomy for the ethnic Karen people since 1948.

William Brown, a former U.S. ambassador to Thailand, touring Asia at the 
behest of President Clinton to try to forge consensus among nations on 
how to get a dialogue going between the Burmese military government and 
democracy advocates led by Aung San Suu Kyi, said in a news conference in 
Bangkok Saturday,  that  one positive development in Burma has been that 
" the use of forced labor in the economy, and particularly in projects 
that involve American firms, has been significantly addressed. "
  
Brown  added that as the Burmese military has gained control of ethnic 
areas, 'the issue of forced labor for porterage diminished.'
  
All evidence by the NLD, the KNU and other rebel groups indicates that 
the contrary is true. It is a dangerous omen, indeed, and a tragic sign 
of approval at this time, in a spirit of compromise by the US government 
of the gross atrocities committed by Slorc and their partners TOTAL, 
UNOCAL, ARCO, PEPSICO and other investors, and should be left unchecked 
by reason and ignorance or denial. Much worse, we see the White House 
backing itself into a corner by recognizing still further the illegal 
Slorc junta in its effort to gain its cooperation, thus playing further 
into Slorc's bloody hands at the cost of the life of Slorc's tragic 
victims - the Burmese people.

It appears that the prejudiced mindset of Ambassador Brown had already 
been set before the mission left Washington. It remains to be seen what 
Stanley Roth, coming out of the National Security Agency meeetings, will 
say on the subject of progress towards democratic reform, a release of 
all political prisoners, and recognition of the NLD as the only 
legitimate authority in the country.

Dawn Star
Euro-Burmanet  
http://www-uvi.eunet.fr/asia/euro-burma

The writer graduated from Yale, and studied at Johns Hopkins Nitze School 
of Advanced International Studies under former Secretary of State Harold 
Brown, and Paul Nitze