Word: burma
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...visit. They later flew to Rangoon to confer with 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi, who was allowed to travel from the home where she has spent 14 of the past 20 years under arrest to a downtown hotel where the diplomats were staying. (See pictures of Burma's slowly shifting landscape...
...expectations are modest," says Aung Zaw, editor of the Irrawaddy, an influential Thailand-based magazine on Burma affairs. "We've seen these on-again, off-again discussions many times before with the United Nations and the European Union, among others." Real change, he said, could come only from Than Shwe, the supreme leader since 1992 of the military committee that rules the country and calls itself the State Peace and Development Council. Describing Burma as an oligarchy, Aung Zaw says that if Than Shwe had the political will, "he could solve 40 years of Burma's problems in four hours...
...visit is the second meeting between the nations' diplomats since U.S. President Barack Obama announced in September that his Administration would pursue a policy of engaging the generals who rule the country rather than rebuffing them. The first meeting took place several weeks ago in New York City. Burma has been under military rule since 1962, and since the bloody suppression of a democracy uprising in 1988, the U.S. has incrementally reduced contacts with the regime and increased sanctions against it for its record of violating human rights and quashing democracy. Larry Dinger, the chargé d'affaires...
...Obama Administration has said it altered its approach because sanctions alone have not worked in bringing about change in the isolated and impoverished nation. For their part, the generals are interested in improving relations because they are overly reliant on China, which has major investments in Burma, as an ally. The junta wants sanctions removed and its upcoming elections to be regarded as legitimate...
...Debbie Stothard, executive director of ALTSEAN, an activist network involved in Burma issues, urged the two U.S. diplomats to stand firm on democracy and human rights during their visit. "The regime won't like it, but they will respect the U.S. more for it. They will know that the U.S. can't be pushed around or fooled like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations," she says. ASEAN, which admitted Burma as a member in 1997, has advocated a course of "constructive engagement" as a way of moderating the regime's behavior, including expanding economic and business ties. Stothard says that...