ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္သမၼတၾကီး ဦးသိန္းစိန္ႏွင့္ ကုလသမဂၢအေထြေထြ အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္
ဘန္ကီမြန္တို႔သည္ ႏို၀င္ဘာလ ၁၉ရက္ေန႔ အင္ဒိုနီးရွား ေဒသစံေတာ္ခ်ိန္ နံနက္ ၇နာရီအခ်ိန္က ဘာလီရွိ Nikko ဟိုတယ္တြင္ ေတြ႕ဆံုခဲ့ၾကျပီး ၄၅မိနစ္ၾကာ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲတစ္ခု ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ၾကပါသည္။
(Reuters) -
Myanmar and the United Nations discussed strengthening cooperation on
Saturday, Myanmar's foreign minister said, in another sign of the
reclusive state's sudden engagement with the world after a half-century
of isolation and oppressive rule.
The U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon said separately in a briefing he had accepted an invitation from
Myanmar President Thein Sein to visit the Southeast Asian country "as
soon as possible." Such a visit could happen within a few months, Ban's
special advisor for Myanmar, Vijay Nambiar, said.
Myanmar
Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin held talks with Ban during the East
Asia Summit, a meeting of leaders from 18 countries, on the Indonesian
island of Bali.
"It was a very
fruitful meeting," he told Reuters. "We discussed about better
cooperation between Myanmar and the United Nations," he said, without
elaborating on details of the cooperation.
Myanmar
has embarked on a series of reforms since the army nominally handed
power in March to civilians after the first elections in two decades, a
process mocked at the time as a sham to seal authoritarian rule behind a
democratic facade.
Its overtures
have since included calls for peace with ethnic minority groups, some
tolerance of criticism, an easing of media controls, the release of
about 230 political prisoners and more communication with Nobel Peace
Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was freed last year from 15 years
of house arrest.
President Barack
Obama praised those reforms on Friday and dispatched Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton to the former British colony, also known as Burma, for a
two-day visit next month to explore the possibility of new ties.
Washington
has cautioned, however, that more needs to be done for the United
States to end sanctions imposed in response to years of human rights
abuses, including the killing of pro-democracy demonstrators and
crackdowns on ethnic minorities.
"We'd
like to see more political prisoners released. We would like to see a
real political process and real elections. We'd like to see an end to
the conflicts, particularly the terrible conflicts with ethnic
minorities," Clinton said in an interview on Fox News on Friday.
"But we think there's an opportunity and we want to test it," she added.
She
plans to meet with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD)
party said on Friday it would contest upcoming by-elections, the latest
sign of political rapprochement under the new civilian government.
The
NLD, Myanmar's biggest opposition force, won a 1990 election by a
landslide but the country's military refused to cede power and, for the
following two decades, suppressed the party's activities, putting many
of its members in prison.
The
party boycotted the next election, held on November 7 last year, because
of strict laws that prevented many of its members from taking part. As a
result, the authorities officially dissolved it but it has continued to
function and enjoys strong support from the public.
INTERNATIONAL ENGAGEMENT
The
European Union also welcomed developments in Myanmar and said a review
of its policy toward the country was under way. A spokesman for EU
policy chief Catherine Ashton urged the country to release more
dissidents but said it was looking at whether reforms could justify an
easing of sanctions.
The timing of
Myanmar's international engagement is crucial as Washington seeks to
counter China's growing influence across Asia and with Myanmar in
particular.
Myanmar, as big as France and Britain combined, sits strategically between booming India and China
with ports on the Indian Ocean and Andaman Sea, all of which have made
it a vital energy security asset for landlocked western China.
Backed
by Chinese money, Myanmar is building a new, multi-billion-dollar port
through which oil can reach a 790-km (490-mile) pipeline now under
construction that will cut across Myanmar and link refineries in western
China. Another parallel pipeline will pump Myanmar's offshore natural
gas to China.
That, along with
hydro-power dams and highway projects, underpins more than $14 billion
of pledged Chinese investment in Myanmar's 2010/11 (April-March) fiscal
year, causing total foreign direct investment promises to soar to $20
billion from just $300 million a year before, official data showed.
Myanmar's
relations with global agencies such as the United Nations, World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund are showing broad signs of improving
after the IMF and World Bank cut ties to Myanmar years ago in response
to rights abuses.
An IMF team is
now visiting the country to study how to unify its official and
unofficial exchange rates. But diplomats say more reforms -- economic
and political -- are likely to be the price of their full support.
(Writing by Jason Szep; Editing by Neil Fullick)
