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HEADLINE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bussiness Recorder - Khin Nyunt calls on Pakistan President India Times - 4000 Myanmar migrant workers
rounded up in Thailand
Reuters-Bay of Bengal group of countries pledge
cooperation
AP-Indian Military Official Visits Myanmar -
Report
AFP - Activists to march for cheaper AIDS
drugs on opening day of conference
Bkk Post - Signs Wa will adopt new role Bussiness Recorder, July 6,
2000.
Myanmar high-up calls on Pakistan President ISLAMABAD (July 6) : Secretary-I of the State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar, Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt met President Muhammad Rafiq Tarar on Wednesday and expressed desire for further strengthening political and economic relations between the two countries. He conveyed the greetings and good wishes of the Chairman of State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar to the President here at the Aiwan-e-Sadr. President Tarar reciprocated these sentiments and expressed confidence that Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt's current visit to Pakistan would further cement the existing co-operative relations between Pakistan and Myanmar.--APP India Times - July 6,
2000.
4000 Myanmar migrant workers rounded up
in Thailand
MAE SOT, Thailand: Thai authorities rounded up 4,000 Myanmar migrant workers from seven factories in a dawn raid on Wednesday and would soon deport them, officials said. Immigration officials were in the process of taking photographs and fingerprints of all the migrants, who were illegally employed in garment and textile factories in Mae Sod district, Tak province, 370 km northeast of Bangkok. "After recording their details, all the arrested migrant workers will be repatriated to Myanmar though a safe channel," said an immigration officer in Mae Sot on customary condition of anonymity. Since late last year, Thailand has deported tens of thousands of the estimated one million migrants, most of them from Myanmar, who have come to find work in Thailand from poorer neighbouring countries. Many have sneaked back to Thailand. (AP) WIRE:07/06/2000 05:35:00 ET
Bay of Bengal group of countries pledge cooperation NEW DELHI, July 6 (Reuters) -
Leaders of a grouping of countries around the rim of the Bay of Bengal
pledged on Thursday to turn their fledgling organisation into a
powerful economic grouping.
The three-year-old association, which includes India, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka began its third ministerial meeting aiming to deepen ancient trading links and cooperation in new areas such as information technology and food processing. "This is a natural trading group that has a historical precedent and
geographical relevance," Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told
delegates.
"Not too long ago, traders from our lands travelled on camel, or
horseback, or by boats and dhows to sell and buy goods from each other,"
he said.
BIMST-EC, as the group is called has focused on building links in
transport, communications, energy and technology between the
countries.
Singh said there was potential to cooperate in food processing,
information technology, infrastructure industry, agriculture and human
resources.
"We ought to commit ourselves to reducing the gap between promise and
reality," he said.
Bangladesh's state minister for foreign affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury
said that BIMST-EC could be a link between South and South-East Asia. "We
feel that Thailand and Myanmar, being partners of ASEAN have much to offer
us," he said.
Tourism was another key area which the grouping could focus on, Sri
Lanka said. "We must encourage the middle class in our region to travel
among our own countries," Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Lakshman
Kiriella said.
He said while BIMST-EC was primarily an economic grouping, there
could be a forum on its fringes to address security concerns of
member-states.
"It is my hope that BIMST-EC while concentrating mainly on economic
cooperation should also on the fringes of these meetings provide a forum
to extend assistance to member countries on issues relating to security
concerns in the Bay of Bengal region," he said.
Sri Lanka has been battling Tamil Tiger rebels who want a separate
homeland for the country's minority Tamils in the north and east since
1983.
Tuesday, July 4 3:54 PM SGT
Indian Military Official Visits Myanmar - ReportYANGON, Myanmar (AP)--Gen. V.P. Malik, India's chief of the army staff, has arrived in Myanmar for his second visit in six months, a state-owned newspaper said Tuesday.The purpose of the visit, which began Monday, was not reported but Myanmar and India are seeking to ease tensions of recent years. The same day, the head of Myanmar's ruling military council Gen. Khin Nyunt left with a 20-member delegation for a visit to India's arch-rival Pakistan, according to diplomatic sources. The visit was not reported in the official media. Malik paid a brief visit to Myanmar in January which was reciprocated by a trip to India by Gen. Maung Aye, the-second ranked leader of the ruling State Peace and Development Council. Indian-Myanmar relations deteriorated following the bloody suppression of a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 by the Myanmar military. Isolated from much of the world community, Myanmar moved closer to its other giant neighbor, China. Thursday, July 6 1:08 AM SGT
Activists to march for cheaper AIDS drugs on opening day of conference JOHANNESBURG, July 5 (AFP) - Some 5,000 AIDS activists from 230 organisations will take to the streets
of Durban, South Africa, on Sunday to demand cheaper drugs as the 13th
International AIDS Conference opens there, a local pressure group said
Wednesday.
The Treatment Action Group (TAC) said it had won the support of
organisations from 33 countries for the march, which will take place while South
Africa's President Thabo Mbeki opens the summit.
TAC has long been at bitter odds with the president and his health ministry
over their refusal to make the anti-AIDS drug AZT widely available to the some
4.2 million South Africans infected with AIDS or its precursor HIV.
"In the process of building this march we have forged a unique and powerful
coalition. The march of July 9 is the beginning of a worldwide response from
below -- after two decades of failure from above," TAC said in a
statement.
The group said 95 percent of AIDS victims did not have access to affordable
treatment for the disease, which has killed almost 19 million people around the
world.
The group wants drugs made affordable and available to all AIDS sufferers
by December 1, 2001.
Protestors are to start their procession with a wreath-laying ceremony and
a moment of silence those who have died of AIDS before proceeding to the sports
stadium where the 13th International AIDS Conference will be opened.
There they will hand in a petition titled the "34 Million Person Manifesto"
the title referring to the number of people infected worldwide with HIV or AIDS,
according to the United Nations agency UNAIDS.
TAC said a copy will also be handed to the International Federation of
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Associations and the chairman of the conference,
South African AIDS expert Professor Hoosen Coovadia.
Among the other well-known South Africans to address the gathering will be
Supreme Court and acting Constitutional Court Judge Edwin Cameron, who last year
announced that he had AIDS, and scientist William Makgoba.
Makgoba, the chairman of the country's Medical Research Council, has
publicly taken Mbeki to task for appearing to question whether AIDS is caused by
the HIV-virus.
He is also one of the signatories of the so-called Durban Declaration, a
document stating that the virus causes AIDS, signed by 5,000 scientists and due
to be published in Britain on Thursday.
The 11,000 delegates due to attend the conference include leading
scientists, government ministers, health care workers, public health agencies,
AIDS services organisations, Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, AIDS
sufferers and movie star Hollywood actor Danny Glover.
Southern Asian nations gather for economic forum
Wednesday, 5 July 2000 12:34 (ET) Southern Asian nations gather for
economic forum
By INAM AHMED DHAKA, Bangladesh, July 5 (UPI) -- Five southern Asian nations,
looking to facilitate trade in the region, prepared to open their third regional
economic meeting this week.
Representatives from Bangladesh, India, Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand
were gathering Wednesday in New Delhi for the meetings.
Bangladesh is the outgoing chairman of BIMSTEC -- the Bangladesh,
India, Myanmar (Burma), Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation. The
chairmanship of BIMSTEC is to pass to Ajit Kumar Panja, State Minister for
Indian External Affairs.
Bangladesh's Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industries President M A
Kasem was expected to be nominated to represent Bangladesh at the forum, which
is supposed to work with government and private sector trade bodies to
facilitate trade, commerce and investment among the member countries. The body
was formed to identify impediments to and ways to boost regional trade.
An early start of the trans-Asian Highway linking the five Asian
countries and setting up of a regional airline service connecting the capitals
of the member-nations may also come up in Thursday's ministerial meeting.
"The third ministerial meeting of BIMSTEC will essentially launch the
economic forum and address the issues of mobilizing greater private sector
investment in the region," said Bangladesh State Minister for Foreign Affairs
Abul Hasan Chowdhury on Wednesday before leaving for the meeting.
Bangkok Post - July 6,
2000.
NARCOTICS Signs Wa will adopt new
role
Army considering drug-free future Diplomats believe there may be indications that the Wa army are making
long-term plans in anticipation of the day when they can no longer support their
activities through the international drug trade.
Recent travellers to the United Wa State Army areas, opposite northern
Thailand, reported that Wa community leaders have started talks on their
policies after 2005. The Wa leadership has claimed that it will halt heroin and
methamphetamine dealing from 2005 onwards.
The narcotics trade has propelled the former pro-China group into a major
economic power in northern Burma.
The army, which signed a peace treaty with Rangoon, has officially dropped
its demand for the creation of a separate state in northern Burma.
Officially, the Wa promised to be loyal to Rangoon, as part of the Union of
Burma, the country's official name. This promise was part of their ceasefire
agreement with the military junta.
But diplomatic sources said that recent travellers to the region say
independence hopes still run high.
Today, only the Karen still have a significant guerrilla resistance against
Rangoon. But slow progress on moving towards democracy has fuelled new
discontent among some ethnic groups.
Travellers to Wa areas have no idea what the top army leaders think.
Wei Hsueh Kang, the drug and military mastermind, has kept a low political
profile. In addition, he was recently put on another, new US, blacklist aimed at
isolating the world's top 12 drug kingpins.
Sources with Wa connections stressed they do not believe there will be a
new declaration of independence in the immediate future-especially ao long as
Rangoon continues to support the drug
trade. |