Times - Barking hound dog Part 1

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Times - (Asia ) Nov 15, 1999 Vol. 154 No. 19

Win Aung: "Sincerity is needed on their side"

TIME contributor Sandra Burton met with Foreign Minister Win Aung on Oct. 18
to discuss the recent visit of United Nations Special Envoy Alvar De Soto
and his efforts to promote national reconciliation and the restoration of
democracy. (A few days later, she met with opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi.) The following is the complete transcript of Burton's meeting with Win
Aung

TIME: Was this a fruitful trip from Myanmar's point of view?
Win Aung: Mr. De Soto had proposed a visit last year. Then we met in New
York after the 1998 General Assembly, before I came back here to take the
job [as foreign minister], and we discussed it. However, later he had to
postpone his visit because of some difficulties. He would like to have a
World Bank official accompany him, but in some quarters there were some
problems.

TIME: Are you referring to the U.S. objections to a World Bank official
going along?
Win Aung: I am a diplomat, so I will not be specific. Let's just say "in
some quarters." Later, the trip was again postponed because of heavy
schedules here. So finally we agreed and set a date and he came here last
week, accompanied by Igiz Nabi, a World Bank official, who is a Pakistani.
Of course we discussed many matters, and we explained the situation in our
country. Our ultimate aim is to build a democratic society, and we told them
what we are doing and what direction we are moving in.

Let me say that they were not specific about how much the World Bank is
going to loan us, or the size of any grants or aid. This was not discussed.
No specifics were discussed. There was no mention of any specific amount of
money which will be [used to assist] us, and of course we did not ask. We
did not have any specific requests on how much we wanted to have. They came
with an assessment of our economy, which they gave us, and an assessment of
our economic situation and the programs of development we are undertaking.

TIME: Can you characterize that assessment and the general tone of the
visit?
Win Aung: We had an exchange of views. Mr. De Soto was visiting our country
as the special representative of the [U.N.] Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
and he has a mandate from the General Assembly to use his good offices to
assist in the Myanmar government's efforts of national reconciliation. That
is the lovely wording of the General Assembly resolution. So according to
that mandate, the Secretary-General will assist our government in our
efforts of national reconciliation.

That's why every year after the resolution, he comes to our country. Mr. De
Soto met with many officials and also some of our national races and, of
course, the NLD [National League for Democracy]. We don't want to call them
the opposition. We are not contesting for power now like in Indonesia right
now. We never say we are a normal government. We are a caretaker government,
so the meaning of the word "opposition" is perhaps different here than in
other countries.

One point I am glad to make is that sometimes people believe that if you
don't have a dark background, the white will then be somewhat blurred. But
people who understand the white and contrasts know there can be many, many
things that may fall in between. The situation is not one where atrocities
occur in our country; there are no sounds of guns any more and no
resemblance to ethnic cleansing, and no people dying from the effects of
war. When we say our people enjoy peace, it means the people are out of the
danger in which they have had to live--living in fear for their lives--in
many past years. Even in my small hometown Dawei, a town southeast of
Yangon. When we were young we couldn't even go outside town because of the
situation. Now you can go out even at night. We hope this will prevail.

In the previous 20 years the situation was not the same. We had a lot of
black or brown areas that were not under the control of the government, and
there were dangers of ambush and attack. But no more. Now these areas are
white areas: clear areas where you can travel even at nighttime without
fear. Sometimes people forget that we have just come out of that situation.
It is not that we have been living under good times and suddenly we are
living under bad times. It is that we have been living under bad times for
so long, and suddenly we are living under good times.

Our program of democracy is secondary. Our fundamental program is national
unity. Given the fact that we have so many diverse races living together, if
we are not united, there will be no chance of survival. A new government can
emerge, but unless we have solved our problems of national unity, it will
not last long.

Why is this so important to us? Because we live in a very strategic
geographical area. If we were in the middle of an ocean it might have been
different. We might not have had so many diverse national races. The people
came to have diverse dialects because they could not communicate so well
from one mountain to another. So different dialects and different clans
emerged. Our country is so mountainous and sometimes inaccessible. It's
difficult to build roads from east to west. So we have not had much
communication between the national races, and that creates a problem.

But the main reason unity was so important is that we have been so divided
in the past. Our history under British colonial rule was also very much
"divide and rule." If I were a colonial master, I might do the same thing,
because the main people living in the Irrawaddy valleys, who were called
Myanmars, were rebellious, unruly people. When Britain annexed our country
to its empire, it realized these people were the hardest to govern, because
of our independence, which we are still very proud of. We are very
independent people and very different from others, perhaps because of our
high mountain ranges which make our country very difficult to invade. The
British came from the sea.

Our people were very inventive people. You can trace them back to the
Central Asian area. We were living in the area between Tibet and the Gobi
Desert, and being desert dwellers we were always loners. We have to be. And
very inventive, because we have to do things for ourselves. We cannot rely
on other people. Many foreigners are surprised that our national
characteristics are sometimes very difficult to understand. Why are our
people so independent? And we're also very individualistic. Then the
outlying Frontier States founded armies that were used against the Burma
people. And when the British were about to leave here after the Second World
War, they gave the impression to these people who had been loyal to the
British Empire that they could have independence for their separate areas.
That was the beginning of all our trouble.

Then in 1947 our national political leaders met in Panlong in Shan State and
postponed the problem for 10 years--it agreed to join the union, but they
could vote in 10 years to secede. Look at our history in that 10-year time.
We had a military government since 1958 because the civilian governments
could not govern any more. Then after that, there were movements to secede
from the union, and then in 1962 the military took over to save the union
from falling apart.

>From 1948 to 1958 a lot of things happened in our region. For instance, the
Korean War and Dienbienphu, South and North Vietnam, and the Chinese and
Indian conflict and Kashmir, and the emergence of the People's Republic of
China in 1949. Then the withdrawal of China's Nationalist forces to our
territory. We have had a lot of problems both internal and external. So we
realized that if we fell into pieces, as prescribed in the constitution, we
would have difficulty surviving. It would be very difficult to survive if we
are splintered.

That's why it's very important that we have to have a new constitution, not
the 1947 constitution. If we had to go along with the old constitution,
there could emerge at least 30 countries--more even than in the Balkans.
Because, for example, not only Kachins live in the Kachin state. Shans and
Was and even Myanmars live there. And in the Shan states, for instance, in
the Wa and Kokang areas near Muse [on the Burma-Chinese border], the people
are more or less Chinese-language speakers. They wanted their homeland,
their own state.

When I was young there were a lot of armies in the Shan states. We called
them multicolored insurgencies, incomparable to any country in the world. If
we counted all the armies and forces fighting against the government, we
could break all the records in the world. Why were these people fighting
against the government? Because each wanted its own homeland. Now what we
are trying to emphasize to them is that if we have separate homelands, none
of us will survive. Let us stick together in this world where our neighbors
are extremely big. We share a 1,000-km-long border with India and a
2,400-km-long border with China. And these two giants are living beside us.
If we are splintered into pieces, how can we create a stable region? The
small states will not be stable, and they could be easily manipulated from
the outside. Then all these states will be fighting one another for natural
resources and water.

That's why what we are trying to do now is talk to all the people and make
peace with everyone and build up confidence with everyone. Right now we are
in a confidence-building period. We must explain to all those forces that
have reached ceasefire agreements with the government that we must share our
administrative powers with the regions. Only if they accept that--only if
they have trust in the government--can we move to further stages of the
national reconciliation.

The bond of friendship is very important. First we need to have contact. Now
we have agreed to that contact. But only after we have met three or four
times and have reached an understanding with each other, only then can
friendship be bonded. For a nation like us, we need to have an everlasting
peace that will bind us together. That is our No. 1 priority. Any government
can emerge in our country, but first we must have solved our problems of
national unity. We need to erase doubts in their minds about whether they
have been unfairly treated. We have to prove that they were not unfairly
treated or neglected. To do that we must go in there and assist them, work
and live together with them, and give them a sense of belonging to the
union.

That's why our government has formed a new ministry that deals with
developing areas of our national minorities. Otherwise, these people will
always feel they are being neglected, and their only remedy will be for them
to try and liberate themselves. So we are trying to assist them and develop
their resources. We must go in there with sincerity and mutual respect. We
cannot look down on these people. Nor do they need to look up to other
people. I myself am a member of the Wei minority, a group of about 600,000
people in the South.