ASEAN ministers to hold emergency talks on Myanmar

By AFP 23 October 2022

PHNOM PENH—Southeast Asian international ministers will maintain emergency talks in Jakarta subsequent week to debate strife-torn Myanmar forward of November’s ASEAN leaders’ summit, diplomatic sources stated Friday.

Myanmar has been in chaos since a coup in February final yr, with greater than 2,300 killed within the army’s brutal crackdown on dissent, in response to an area monitoring group.

The Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has spearheaded up to now fruitless efforts to resolve the disaster, and the bloc is annoyed by escalating human rights atrocities — together with the execution of political prisoners and a latest airstrike on a college.

There was little progress on a five-point plan from April final yr, which referred to as for an finish to violence, elevated humanitarian help, in addition to dialogue between the army and the anti-coup motion.

An Indonesian international ministry official stated a gathering was scheduled for Thursday on the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta.

The talks are anticipated to assessment progress on the plan.

“A particular assembly is now wanted as there are particular points that will probably be regarded into additional earlier than the leaders’ assembly,” the official instructed AFP.

“The Myanmar junta doesn’t present any need or concrete steps for implementation (of the plan).”

The official famous that any potential suspension of Myanmar’s ASEAN membership wouldn’t be a straightforward course of.

One other diplomatic supply instructed AFP that article seven of the ASEAN constitution, which permits the 10-country bloc’s leaders to handle an emergency state of affairs, can be the premise for motion.

Worldwide Institute for Strategic Research analyst Aaron Connelly stated doable choices included a de facto suspension and an growth of the variety of conferences that junta officers weren’t invited to attend.

“They may for example now not attend the defence ministers’ assembly,” he stated.

Cambodian Overseas Minister Prak Sokhonn — who’s a particular envoy to Myanmar as a part of his nation’s function as host of the ASEAN summit — will chair Thursday’s assembly.

Chum Sounry, Cambodia’s international ministry spokesman, instructed AFP a crew had been despatched to Myanmar to debate concrete motion and the envoy’s third go to to the nation — initially slated for September.

“We are actually ready for a response from the Myanmar aspect,” he stated.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has not been invited to the ASEAN leaders’ summit — for the second yr in a row — and Myanmar’s high diplomat Wunna Maung Lwin was excluded from ministerial talks in February and August.