SCMP-Lobbyists resign as junta fail

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Subject: SCMP-Lobbyists resign as junta fails to pay up 

Wednesday  March 17  1999
The Mekong Region

Lobbyists resign as junta fails to pay up

BURMA by WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok
Washington lobbyists paid to polish Burma's international image have quit
after the junta stopped paying their bills.

Jefferson Waterman International confirmed it had stopped acting for Burma
because of "non-payment". Bain and Associates also said Burma was no longer
a client.

The companies - paid by Burmese firms fronting for the Government - were
hired soon after Burma gained membership of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (Asean) in mid-1997.

The junta appeared to feel that having persuaded Asean to turn a blind eye
to its failings, the West might be induced to do the same.

However, the Government's pariah status has not changed much. It suffered an
ignominious snub last month when most Western nations boycotted Interpol's
annual drugs conference because it was held in Rangoon.

Former US assistant secretary of state for narcotics Ann Wrobleski and her
firm, Jefferson Waterman, were paid US$500,000 (HK$3.9 million). While a US
official, Ms Wrobleski supported a 1989 ban on anti-narcotics aid to Burma,
arguing that if Rangoon was to tackle the drugs menace it needed "a
government enjoying greater credibility and support among the Burmese
people".

A former TV journalist, Jackson Bain was hired for nearly US$250,000. Mr
Bain told the Washington Post that Burma was "not ready for prime time" but
said he enjoyed the challenge of trying to present a fuller picture.

A third firm, the Atlantic Group, was paid to try to overturn US sanctions.

Soon after US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright savaged Burma at an
August 1997 meeting of Asean, Mr Bain told his employers that he was
"actively cultivating" reporters and editors.

Both Jefferson Waterman and Bain and Associates offered reporters Burmese
trips.

Critics have seen the hand of experts in such silky rebuttals as the
Government's letter claiming that a recent South China Morning Post article
was guilty of "egregious misrepresentation".

Burmese generals are mostly dull plodders thanks to a military code that
values loyalty above all other virtues. But some soldiers with flair have
started to make an impact in recent years.


The US-educated soldier-turned-diplomat Win Aung replaced the sometimes
prickly Ohn Gyaw as Foreign Minister late last year.

Mr Win Aung says the military has been weak in explaining the "real
situation".

Yet he has changed little: European Union countries cited zero progress on
Burmese political reform and human rights when they refused to meet Asean
ministers this month as long as Burma insisted on sitting in.

The director of the Open Society Institute's Burma Project, Maureen
Aung-thwin, said: "The Asean argument that membership of the association
would make Burma more liberal appears to have backfired."

She said the Government's only interest was in changing its image.

She argued that if Burma was gaining in the public relations stakes it was
because there was no way to go but up. "Even so, they sound ridiculous when
they claim in government-owned newspapers that people in Burma live 'happily
without repression, fear and anxiety'," she said.