Chemical Generation Singapore

Singapore is no longer Asean Chair.  There is no longer need to pretend to protect Burma, the spoilt retarded orphan in Asean. This is a good opportunity for Singapore and the rest of Asean to kick out Burma. Engagement has failed. Burma is quietly smiling away at how it has managed to get its own way every time. I certainly don’t believe that the Lady would just only be under house arrest for 18 months. Another supposed crime or technicality would manifest and her term would be extended. She has been in and out of house arrest since she returned to Burma in 1989 and nothing will change with this junta.

Myanmar antics pose new headache for frustrated neighbours

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Myanmar’s treatment of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has once again embarrassed its neighbours, and revived calls for the military state to be expelled from the regional bloc ASEAN.

The junta this week extended the opposition leader’s house arrest for another 18 months, drawing international outrage but underlining how resistant the ruling generals are to outside pressure.

The case came just a month after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) endorsed the region’s first human rights watchdog and fended off criticism it would be powerless to tackle rogue members.

“The arrest shows that the relationship between Myanmar and its ASEAN partners is not as robust as it was in the past,” said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia specialist with the Singapore Management University.

“ASEAN leaders are frustrated because they think they’ve engaged and embraced Myanmar on many different levels,” she said, including unprecedented humanitarian cooperation after a devastating cyclone in 2008.

Welsh said Myanmar’s insistence on putting its own domestic interests well ahead of those of its neighbours meant it would continue to cause real damage by constantly overshadowing the bloc.

“ASEAN does not want as an organisation to always be associated with Burma,” she said, noting that Washington’s interactions with the region have been particularly dominated by the affairs of Myanmar, which was previously known as Burma.

“Most ASEAN countries are small and they need the organisation for global representation, and when that talk is dominated by the actions of one country, it prevents regional issues from getting adequate attention.”

Suu Kyi’s legal team is expected to appeal her latest sentence, which stemmed from a stunt in which American man John Yettaw swam to her lakeside house in May.

A prison court sentenced her to three years of hard labour after finding her guilty of breaching the terms of her incarceration, but junta strongman Than Shwe commuted the punishment to a year and a half under house arrest.

Lim Kit Siang, vice-president of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Caucus on Myanmar, said the junta had shown “utter contempt” for the organisation’s ideals and that regional governments must now respond with more than words.

“The time has come for ASEAN to seriously consider expulsion or at least suspension of Myanmar from ASEAN,” he said in a statement.

Analysts said the timing of the latest drama was unfortunate as ASEAN members had just forged agreement on the human rights body.

“The verdict is an embarrassment for ASEAN because it has been grappling with the issue of human rights and trying to establish acceptable norms among members,” said Tim Huxley from the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“If political confrontation was taken to its logical conclusion, Burma could be suspended or expelled but frankly that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Myanmar’s neighbours are concerned that if Southeast Asia’s problem child is ejected from the grouping, it could be driven further into the embrace of China, which is hungry to exploit its natural resources.

There are also business interests to protect — regional states have close business ties with Myanmar, refusing to join the United States and European Union in imposing sanctions on the regime which has been in power since 1962.

And ASEAN is hamstrung by its principle of non-interference in members’ internal affairs, which during its 42-year history has prevented it from bringing errant members into line.

Despite its consensus-based approach, some of the more democratic members of the disparate grouping — which also takes in monarchies and communist states — are becoming increasingly outspoken over Myanmar.

Malaysia led calls for an urgent meeting of ASEAN members to address the latest crisis, deploring the sentence that prevents Suu Kyi from taking part in general elections next year.

And Indonesia, increasingly confident on the world stage, made a strong push to give more teeth to the new human rights body, in a stand that nearly scuttled its endorsement last month.

“The guilty verdict… is a serious blow to the standing of ASEAN both locally and internationally,” Alistair Cook and Mely Caballero-Anthony from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies said in a commentary.

“If ASEAN does little to improve this situation, then its credibility will be further undermined… It will be difficult for the association to portray itself as providing regional solutions to regional problems.” By SARAH STEWART/AFP)

The entire Welcome Home saga was first class in PR management and story-telling. A hungry human interest-angle media waiting at the special hanger to receive the 2 fortunate American journalists. The optimism that the North Koreans can be persuaded  out of goodwill although nobody wanted to ask what was offered to them quietly for the quid pro quo and the persistence of their blackmail strategy in the world stage.  Most important of all, the Carter-Clinton formula that former presidents can do their own Track 1.5 diplomacy, with or without the endorsement of the ruling government of the day.  I just can’t help but think of Lee Kuan Yew’s globetrotting since he stepped down.

Analysis: Bill Clinton as a diplomatic fix-it man

WASHINGTON (CNN) — It was a heartwarming sight: Laura Ling and Euna Lee landing on U.S. soil and being reunited with their families.

To their elation of their families, Bill Clinton returned to the U.S. with journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

Then, after an appropriate amount of time for hugs and kisses, Bill Clinton appeared, descending from his movie-producer friend’s plane like an angel from heaven.

An emotional Ling practically referred to the former president as a messiah, describing to the media and well-wishers waiting at the airport how she and Lee thought they were being sent to a hard-labor camp, only to walk through a door to find Clinton. The crowd broke into loud applause.

For all of those who wondered what Bill would do in Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic world, wonder no longer.

As details of the Clinton mission came out, it was revealed that the North Koreans themselves asked for Clinton, promising amnesty for the women upon delivery of the former president, whose visit eluded them while he was in office. The deal was done even before Clinton stepped on the plane.

So what is next for Bill Clinton?

If the mere thought of a meeting with him is enough to move a regime notorious for never moving, can the Obama administration use that star power to rescue three American hikers who ventured into Iran and are believed to be held by Iranian authorities? Can Clinton head off two Russian attack submarines cruising in the Atlantic off the East Coast of the United States?

Former presidents are used as envoys and undertake humanitarian missions all the time.

Then-President Clinton used former President Jimmy Carter to travel to North Korea in 1994 to negotiate the end to the first nuclear crisis. Clinton and his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, were tapped by Bush’s son, then-President George W. Bush, to lead relief efforts to help Asian and African nations devastated by the 2004 tsunami and again in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.

But the relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton and President Obama is complex, to say the least. After a bitter-fought battle during the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton supporters were looking for a robust role for her in exchange for her support of Obama, with many even suggesting her as a possible candidate for vice president.

That idea was short-lived. The Obama team wanted Hillary far from the West Wing. And they wanted Bill even farther.

When Obama tapped Hillary to be his secretary of state, there was no shortage of critics who asserted that her husband’s global foundation and role as a high-paid public speaker would present a conflict of interest. The Clintons agreed to strict rules of the road to avoid such conflicts going forward.

However Hillary never demurred in her praise for what her husband has accomplished, both during his eight years in the White House or post-presidency. Hillary herself has said she considered her husband a trusted adviser and could even consider him using him where appropriate. He is a former president, after all.

Bill Clinton has largely stayed out of the limelight, quietly continuing his globetrotting on behalf of the world’s poor and downtrodden. In May, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed him as the United Nations’ special envoy to Haiti in an effort to refocus international attention on the Caribbean country’s deep economic problems and environmental decay.

But with the success of his North Korean mission so quick and easy, it’s conceivable that Bill Clinton could add the role of “diplomatic cleaner” to his resume — a version of Harvey Keitel’s role as Winston Wolfe in the movie “Pulp Fiction” — a fixer of messy problems, which he solves with a combination of stylish charisma and lucid thinking under pressure.

The Obama administration has no shortage of messy foreign policy problems that Hillary Clinton knows could use a Winston Wolfe.