Daw Suu news in Edmonton Journal

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Bickering marks ASEAN meeting

    Asian leaders, usually careful not to step on each other's toes,
bickered Monday behind closed doors over who should be
blamed for the region's economic misery and increasing political
insecurity.
     It was a far cry from the amiable gatherings of years past when
leaders can flaunt their latest modernisation achievements
and no one was ever rebuked.

At the annual one-day meeting  of the foreign ministers of the
Association of South-East Asian Nations(ASEAN), India and
Pakistan were charged  with creating regional tension after their May
nuclear tests.
     The tests, Asian leaders said, had encouraged an arms race that
neither of the two impoverished nations, nor their
neighbours, all suffering from a recession, can afford.
 Behind closed doors, Burma's military rulers were sharply criticized
for their refusal to permit more democracy, a rebuke that
coincided with the plight of the country's democratic leader, Nobel
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. She has lived for four days in
her car after authorities stopped her on her way to a meeting.

Gone were the days of fixed smiles, polite bows and consensus on
resolutions that carefully avoided references to violations
of human rights.
     "We are meeting at a time more characterized by doubt than by
triumph," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told
the forum.
     Unity and pride in modernisation were replaced by a doomsday
atmosphere generated by social unrest, snowballing
unemployment and unprecedented crime waves from Papua New Guinea, to
Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand.

     Thousands of factories and companies have gone bankrupt or closed
after Asian currencies crashed against the U.S. dollar.
In Indonesia alone, only eight out of 230 banks remain healthy,
one-third of the 90-million workforce lost their jobs and an
average  seven-per-cent growth rate turned into a minus 15-per-cent
debacle.

"Over the last year, about $600 billion has fled out of Asia, mainly to
the United States. But U.S. investors also have lost
about $320 billion in Asia," said Peter Gontha, a senior executive of
the Indonesian conglomerate Bimantara.
     China's foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, saw the economic crisis as
"no less than a war." He discarded Beijing's usual policy
of "non-interference in  the domestic affairs of nations" and warned
that india's nuclear tests had caused a "sudden wave of
tension" in the region.
     The tension was apparent at the forum , which considered a
resolution urging India and Pakistan to freeze their nuclear
programs and sign international non-proliferation treaties. For the
first time in ASEAN, where decisions must be unanimous, a
resolution was not adopted.


The Edmonton Journal
Tuesday, July 28, 1998