Thailand: Heavy security in North keeps protesters from PM

By THE NATION ON SUNDAY


Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's official tour of Phitsanulok, Sukhothai and Phichit yesterday went smoothly with no violence or disruption, thanks to heavy security that prevented anti-government protesters from getting close to him.

Hundreds of anti-riot police and four helicopters were deployed as hundreds of red shirts gathered on the Phitsanulok-Sak Lek road in Phitsanulok's Wang Thong district.

Abhisit arrived in Phitsanulok in the morning and took a helicopter to Sukhothai before returning to Wang Thong. As soon as his helicopter touched down, about 5,000 supporters including local villagers, politicians and officials rushed out to greet him.

Anti-riot police lined up to stop the red-shirt protesters gathered on the provincial road from breaching their human barricade and reaching Abhisit. Metal barriers were used to block the road. No violence was reported.

During his inspection of the implementation of government policies such as free education and crop-price insurance, Abhisit asked villagers if they were happy with the projects aimed at helping farmers. They said they were pleased with the subsidy programme.

Abhisit also took some time in Phitsanulok to record his weekly television address.

He said the government would ensure the well-being of farmers, who make up most of the population, and would continue with the free education scheme as well as the Bt500 monthly allowance for the elderly.

He said he got good feedback from farmers in Chiang Rai's Udon Thanim on the government income-insurance scheme and would go ahead in executing the project.

Abhisit said Phitsanulok would receive up to Bt3.8 billion from the Thai Khemkhaeng stimulus scheme next year, the highest budget for lower northern provinces. The funds will be used in constructing water reservoirs, high-speed trains, parallel railways and four-lane roads throughout the province.

Lt General Surasi Sunthornsaltoon, commissioner of Provincial Police Region 6, said police had been able to prevent the hundreds of red shirts from coming close to the prime minister in Phitsanulok by keeping them at least 1 kilometre away.

No violence was reported in Sukhothai as there were only 30 protesters there.

Democrat Party MP for Phitsanulok Nakhon Machim said villagers gave Abhisit a warm welcome and the government received a great response to its policies.

Most villagers knew that Abhisit had come to help them and they did not want to see any more social divisions, he said.

"Abhisit is very hot here," he said as the PM spent half an hour posing with locals who had queued up for a chance to have their picture taken with him.

Abhisit left Phitsanulok in the afternoon for his next stop in Phichit. He was as popular there, with 3,000 supporters waiting to welcome him.

They urged him to continue in his post and not dissolve Parliament. Six hundred police threw a security blanket over him though there was no report of red-shirt protesters there.

Source: The Nation

New EU ‘Foreign Minister’ Must Support, Not Undermine, EU Foreign Policy

For Immediate Release 20th November 2009



The Burma Campaign UK today called on Baroness Ashton, the new EU high representative for Foreign Affairs, to support, not undermine EU policy on Burma, as European Commission officials have been doing for years.

The European Union adopted a joint foreign policy on Burma, the known as a Common Position, in 1996. The 27 EU Member states have agreed a strategy that includes targeted economic sanctions against Burma. These sanctions are also supported by the European Parliament. However, European Commission officials have consistently tried to undermine the EU policy of targeted sanctions. They have criticised sanctions publicly, privately, and organised conferences where speakers are chosen with heavy bias for those against current EU policy, including sanctions.

“Of the big three European Union institutions, the two with some democratic accountability, the Council of member states, and the European Parliament, have pursued a policy of targeted sanctions, but the Commission has pursued its own policy, undermining member states and Parliament,” said Mark Farmaner, Director of Burma Campaign UK. “We cannot continue with a situation where unaccountable Commission officials use tax-payers money to pursue their own agenda, undermining the policy of the democratic institutions of the EU.”

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has repeatedly contradicted EU member states, including opposing sanctions agreed after the 2007 democracy uprising and after the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi. She has also taken a positive approach to fake elections due in Burma in 2010, which have been rejected in their current form by EU member states.

The contradictory messages given by the Commission compared to the EU Council and Parliament undermines the credibility and influence of the EU with Burma and its Asian neighbours. The Burma Campaign UK has written to the new high representative asking for an assurance that she will not pursue an independent foreign policy, but rather will work to ensure there is more cohesion, and that Commission officials do not publicly or privately try to undermine EU policy on Burma.

For more information contact Mark Farmaner, Director of Burma Campaign UK, on 07941239640.


Mark Farmaner

Director

Burma Campaign UK
28 Charles Square
London
N1 6HT

Direct Tel: +44 (0)20 7324 4713

Mobile:+44 (0)7941239640
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Thailand: PM to visit Chiang Mai next weekend

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has reaffirmed his intention to visit Chiang Mai on Nov 29 to attend the Thai Chamber of Commerce meeting, despite threats made to his safety.

The confirmation came after a community radio station reportedly claimed that a bomb would take the life of the prime minister during his visit to the northern province, which is hometown of ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

Mr Abhisit is due to address members of the Thai Chambers of Commerce on the economy and has said previously the issues are too important to cancel the meeting.

He insisted on Friday there would be no change of plans. He believed local security officials could keep the situation under control.

Asked if he was intimidated by the threat, Mr Abhisit replied that he had no right to be frightened. It was his duty to attend the meeting.

It was not the first time he had heard about a threat to his life, but this time it was stated publicly, he said.

Prime Minister's Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey said the government would take legal action against any community radio station that tries to incite people to break the law or obstruct Mr Abhisit's visit to Chiang Mai.

The station operators would face charges and the radio stations could be closed, he said. The government was not abusing its authority to interfere in the stations' right to express opinions, but they must not break the law.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said he was worried by the theat made against Mr Abhisit's life and had instructed local authorities to step up security measures.

Mr Suthep, who is in charge of security affairs, also said that the Internal Security Act might be invoked to ensure peace and order during the mass anti-government rally by the red-shirts planned for Nov 28 to Dec 2 in Bangkok. He would recommend its use to the cabinet.

“The government will closely monitor the situation. I will propose the use of the security law to the cabinet meeting for consideration next Tuesday,” Mr Suthep said.

The red-shirts have the right to assemble to pressure the government to call a general election, but if the House were to be dissolved the procedure must be constitutional, he added.

The anti-government protest was aimed at paving the way for Thaksin to return to power and to regain his frozen 76 billion baht in assets, he said.

Source: Bangkok Post

Abhisit confident CATS takeover won't worsen spat

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva says he is confident Cambodia's move to take over air traffic operations from a Thai firm will not worsen the bitter spat between the two countries.

The prime minister said there was no sign that what happened to Cambodia Air Traffic Service (CATS) would erode the confidence of other Thai businesses operating in the country.

The Cambodian government on Wednesday ordered all Thai officials of CATS to stop work. The order followed Phnom Penh's decision to charge Sivarak Chutipong, a CATS engineer, with spying by allegedly supplying the classified flight plan of convicted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra to a Thai diplomat.

Executive vice chairman of Samart Corporation Plc Sirichai Rasameechan told the Stock Exchange of Thailand yesterday that a senior civil aviation official of the Cambodian government had taken over the operations.

"Samart Corporation Plc has been closely cooperating with the Thai government to help negotiate with the Cambodian government for the release of Mr Sivarak and resolve this incident," he said in a statement.

CATS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Samart. It has a contract to provide air traffic control services in Cambodia for 32 years, from 2001 to 2033. Revenue from the Cambodian operation was about 800 million baht last year, about 5% of the group's consolidated revenues.

Despite Mr Abhisit's optimism, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya sent a strong message to Phnom Penh on the issue, saying Cambodia should respect the Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement made with Thailand.

"The decision must be in tandem with the Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. If it is not, then we need to find a way to take action," Mr Kasit said.

Mr Kasit also challenged the Puea Thai Party to reveal what it claimed was a secret tape recording of his conversation with the embassy in which he allegedly tried to obtain Thaksin's flight details.

Puea Thai MP Jatuporn Prompan claimed the Cambodian government had an audio clip of Mr Kasit.

"I am dying to listen to my voice. Does Mr Jatuporn work for Cambodia?" Mr Kasit asked reporters.

Mr Kasit said the ministry was waiting for confirmation from Cambodian authorities about when the detained Thai engineer could receive visitors.

The government plans to arrange for his mother, Simarak na Nakhon Phanom, to travel to Prey Sar prison in the Cambodian capital to visit her son.

Mr Kasit rejected an offer by Puea Thai chairman Chavalit Yongchaiyudh to help bring Mr Sivarak back home, saying it was not Gen Chavalit's responsibility. The government was taking care of it.

Source: Bangkok Post

Than Shwe should not let go of Suu Kyi’s offer: Observers

by Salai Han Thar San & Mungpi
Tuesday, 17 November 2009 22:20

New Delhi (Mizzima) - Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s proposal to meet the ruling junta’s military supremo Snr Gen Than Shwe in person to further discuss easing of sanctions, is a good step and could lead to a breakthrough in Burmese politics, observers said.

Detained Nobel Peace Laureate, through her party spokesperson, Nyan Win, on November 11, sent a second proposal requesting Than Shwe for a meeting in person to further discuss easing of sanctions.

According to the letter, released on Tuesday by the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi also requested Than Shwe to allow her to pay homage to ageing party Chairman Aung Shwe, Secretary U Lwin, and executive committee member Lun Tin, at their respective residences.

She also requested to allow a meeting with the NLD Central Executive Committee (CEC) at her lakeside residence after which she is willing to cooperate with Than Shwe on activities that serve the interest of the nation.

“I would like to request a meeting with Senior General Than Shwe to discuss on activities that we should be cooperating with him for the interest of the nation,” she added in her letter.

Aye Thar Aung, Secretary of the Committee Representing Peoples Parliament (CRPP), an alliance formed among various ethnic political parties and the NLD in Rangoon, said he welcomed Aung San Suu Kyi’s proposal.

“We would welcome any initiative that could start a dialogue and ultimately lead to national reconciliation,” Aye Thar Aung said.

Though the pretext of the meeting might be to follow up on easing western sanctions, it could be the first step in building trust between the opposition and the military, which can kick-start a process of national reconciliation.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s letter to Than Shwe is the second proposal sent by her in three months. In September, the Nobel Peace Laureate, told Than Shwe she is willing to cooperate with the government to help ease western sanctions, and requested to arrange a meeting between her and diplomats from United States, European Union, and Australia, which was granted.

“It is a good move from Aung San Suu Kyi. Than Shwe should have agreed for the talks a long time ago. But it is not too late now either. He should grab this opportunity and start the process of national reconciliation,” Aye Thar Aung said.

Meanwhile, Nyo Ohn Myint, foreign affairs in-charge of the NLD in exile (NLD-Liberated Area) said, he believes that Than Shwe is likely to make a positive response and meet the Burmese pro-democracy leader, as it would be more beneficial for the military regime to hold talks at this moment.

“Because after Aung San Suu Kyi offered her help to cooperate with the regime to ease sanctions, Than Shwe seems to be happy, and is becoming softer,” Nyo Ohn Myint said.

He said, the Burmese democracy icon is taking the right step in proposing a direct meeting with Than Shwe, and believes that it is the first move in her effort to start a process of national reconciliation.

“Aung San Suu Kyi’s action reveals that she is putting the people as her priority. And it is also timely for her to make the proposal,” he added.

But he said, Than Shwe will have to deal with political problems including ethnic nationalities aspiration for federal union, and democratic movement.

Aye Thar Aung said, “If Than Shwe fails to grab the opportunity and agree to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the country would further suffer, and both sides would not benefit. But the military must understand it can no longer go ahead with its plan, and will lack support from the international community.”

Aung San Suu Kyi’s proposals came as the international community, particularly the United States, is throwing light on the situation in Burma with an announcement of its new policy on the country.

It also coincided with the ruling junta’s effort to contain ethnic armed groups into its Border Guard Force issue, in conformity with its newly drafted and approved 2008 constitution, on which next year’s general elections would be based.

The US has made it clear that it will abandon its old policy of isolation and directly engage the military regime, but will maintain existing sanctions, which would be expandable or ease it depending on the junta’s behaviour.

Source: Mizzima News

Obama: Free Suu Kyi

Singapore: US President Barack Obama on Sunday told the Burmese junta to free pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi during an unusual face-to-face interaction with a top leader of the ruling military.

Obama delivered the strong message during his summit with leaders of 10 Southeast Asian nations, which included Burmese Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that Obama called on Burma to free his fellow Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and end oppression of minorities.

"Obama brought that up directly with that government," Gibbs said, indicating that the president addressed Thein Sein.

For decades, Western governments have avoided direct contacts with leaders of Burma because of the regime's poor human rights record and suppression of democracy.

Before opening the talks in a hotel ballroom, Obama and all 10 Asean leaders stood in a line on a stage, crossing their arms to join hands with the leader on either side.

Obama was flanked by Mr Lee to his left and Philippine President Gloria Arroyo on his right. Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein was three places to the US president's right, and sat four seats away from Mr Obama as the leaders assembled at a round table.

A joint statement issued after the summit - the first ever between a US president and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - devoted a paragraph on Burma, a major irritant in relations between the two sides.

But the statement did not call for the release of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, who has spent 14 of the last 20 years under detention by the military regime. It only urged Burma to ensure that the elections it intends to hold in 2010 are "conducted in a free, fair, inclusive and transparent manner."

However, a direct appeal from Obama carries more weight as he is the most powerful leader to have conveyed the message directly to a top Burmese official.

Thein Sein did not address leaders' concerns about Suu Kyi, said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. "We expected a bit more but it was not forthcoming. We hope (democracy) ... in Myanmar will become a reality sooner than later," he told reporters.

He said a reference to Suu Kyi was not included in the statement because there was no consensus.

White House aides said Asean was unlikely to include an explicitly critical statement on one of its members, since it would amount to Burma criticising itself. That's why Obama raised the issue directly in his remarks to the group, said the aides.

Obama, in a broad policy speech in Tokyo on Saturday, also made a point of mentioning Suu Kyi by name.

Before the summit, the 11 leaders gathered for a photo shoot for a few minutes, but Obama and Thein Sein stayed far from each other and made no contact of any sort.

The Burmese government has said the 2010 elections are another step toward democracy, but has not clarified whether Suu Kyi will be allowed to participate. The junta refused to honor the result of the last elections in 1990 when Suu Kyi's party won by a landslide.

Although the United States recently eased its policy toward Burma by initiating talks with the generals, it has made clear economic sanctions won't be lifted unless Suu Kyi is released.

Earlier this month, two senior US diplomats went to Burma for talks, and also had a private meeting with Suu Kyi. It was the highest-level US visit to Burma in 14 years.

Sunday's US-Asean summit - held just after the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum - is the outcome of the new thinking in Washington that ignoring Burma will not yield any results, and relations with Southeast Asia should not be held hostage by the junta.

Source: Bangkok Post

Govt ready to fly Thais out of Cambodia

By THE NATION ON SUNDAY,
THAI NEWS AGENCY


Thailand is preparing to evacuate its citizens from Cambodia if the diplomatic row between the countries worsens, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said yesterday.

"The arrest of a Thai national will not lead to closure of the embassy [in Phnom Penh]. The Thai government will ensure security for the Cambodian Embassy in Thailand and we believe Cambodia will also take care of our embassy in that country," Suthep said.

"If bilateral relations become more violent, the government is ready to evacuate Thai citizens from Cambodia immediately," he added.

In early 2003, the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh was burnt by rioters and several Thai-owned businesses in Cambodia were attacked following a rumour that a Thai actress had claimed the Angkor Wat temple - Cambodia's prized cultural icon - belonged to Thailand. An evacuation of Thai citizens followed the riots.

Suthep said the government had provided legal assistance for a Thai engineer arrested in Cambodia last week on charges of spying.

Siwarak Chothipong, 31, who works at Cambodia Air Traffic Service, is accused of supplying the Thai Embassy with details of ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra's flight schedule, according to Cambodian police.

Thailand submitted a request to visit the detained suspect, which was being considered by Cambodia's Interior Ministry, said officials from both countries.

"We have to see him, whatever happens," said Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, secretary to Thailand's foreign minister. "Thailand categorically denies all of the spy allegations."

There was no reply from the Cambodian authorities yesterday, he said, adding that it was probably because it was a holiday.

Suthep told journalists that flight information on Thaksin's journey to Cambodia was not a secret, as the Aviation Department and Aeronautical Radio of Thailand had been asked to allow his chartered jet to fly over Thai airspace.

After learning that the plane had Thaksin on board, the government refused to allow it permission to pass through Thai airspace as he has been convicted and was also facing charges of threatening national security, Suthep said.

The deputy prime minister said Thailand would use this evidence to defend Siwarak, but the government would not intervene in Cambodia's judicial system. Initially, Samart Corp - Siwarak's employer - sent a lawyer to assist him.

In Singapore, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said yesterday that the ongoing diplomatic spat between Thailand and Cambodia would not affect cooperation among Asean members, emphasising that the problem must be solved by the two countries.

Abhisit, who is attending the 17th Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting, told journalists that Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan had advised that Thailand and Cambodia should resolve the tension before the Asean leaders meet US President Barack Obama today.

He affirmed that Thailand, currently the Asean chair, would not raise the issue at the meeting.

Source: The Nation

Thaksin leaves Cambodia

Fugitive prime minister Thaksin Shinawtra has late Saturday morning left Phnom Penh for Dubai.

He had completed his first mission as an economic advisor to the Cambodian government by briefing his economic plans on economic and rural development and poverty problem solving to Cambodian economists on Thursday.

On Friday morning, Thaksin played golf with Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen in Siam Reap.

After that he welcomed about 70 MPs of the opposition Puea Thai Party and a large number of red-shirts from Thailand.


Source: Bangkok Post

ေဒၚစုအမႈ ျပင္ဆင္ခ်က္တင္ၿပီ

13 November 2009


ျမန္မာ့ဒီမုိကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ ေနအိမ္အက်ယ္ခ်ဳပ္ အယူခံ နဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ အက်ဳိးေဆာင္ေရွ႕ေနေတြက ဒီကေန႔ တရားရုံးခ်ဳပ္ကို ျပင္ဆင္ခ်က္ တင္သြင္းလိုက္ပါၿပီ။ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္အေပၚ အျပစ္ေပးတဲ့ စီရင္ခ်က္ဟာ ဥပေဒနဲ႔မညီဘဲ မွားယြင္းတဲ့ စီရင္ခ်က္ျဖစ္တယ္ ဆုိတာကို ထပ္မံေလွ်ာက္လဲ တင္ျပမယ္လုိ႔ အက်ဳိးေဆာင္ေရွ႕ေနေတြက ေျပာပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစုံကို ကိုသိန္းထုိက္ဦး အစီရင္ခံထားပါတယ္။

Read more: http://www.voanews.com/burmese/2009-11-13-voa6.cfm

Move to get Hun Sen's degree recalled

Thirty-seven MPs and senators on Friday submitted a petition for Parliament President Chai Chidchob to ask Ramkhamhaeng University to recall the honorary doctorate degree on political science conferred on Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The petition said Hun Sen had broken diplomatic ethics regarding the Thai-Cambodian relations.

It said Hun Sen had acted unethically by appointing fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra his adviser and rejecting Thailand's request to extradite him.

"What he has done is not what a good political scientist should do. He has caused a serious conflict with a neighbouring country in contrary with the honour bestowed on him by the university," said Atthaporn Polaboot, a Democrat MP for Phetchaburi.

Source: Bangkok Post

Thai arrested in Cambodia for spying

A 31-year-old Thai mechanic working for Cambodia Air Traffic Services was arrested in Cambodia on Wednesday for allegedly stealing the flight data of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and itineraries of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.

Kieth Chantharit, the spokesman for the Cambodian police, said the Thai man, who was identified as Sivarak Chotipong, had been charged with spying. the Xnhua report said.

Mr Sivarak was arrested on Wednesday under a warrant issued by the Phnom Penh Court,. He is accused of supplying the information to Thai authorities.

The police spokesman said Mr Sivarak had been taken to court in Phnom Penh. He gave no further details, the Xinhua report said.

Source: Bangkok Post

Region: National Assembly To Pull Sam Rainsy Immunity

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
12 November 2009

A National Assembly committee on Thursday moved to revoke the parliamentary immunity of opposition leader Sam Raisny, who is facing charges in Svay Rieng provincial court of destruction of property and incitement of racial discrimination.

The Permanent Committee of the Assembly approved a Ministry of Justice request that his immunity be removed for investigation to proceed, said Cheam Yiep, a senior lawmaker for the ruling Cambodian People’s Party.

The full Assembly, heavily dominated by the CPP, will vote to revoke Sam Rainsy’s immunity on Monday, Cheam Yiep said.

Sam Rainsy is the third opposition member to lose National Assembly immunity this year, in what critics have called an attack on government dissent through the courts.

Svay Rieng authorities allege that Sam Rainsy provoked villagers into uprooting six temporary poles at border marker No. 185, in Chantrea district, where they had said they worried about Vietnamese encroachment from neighboring Long An province.

In 2005, Sam Rainsy and two other opposition lawmakers had their immunity suspended, when they accused Prime Minister Hun Sen and former National Assembly head Prince Norodom Ranariddh of building up their respective security forces.

SRP spokesman Yim Sovann said the National Assembly was taking a full session to vote on the immunity question at a time when Cambodia “suffers from threats on the eastern and western borders.”

“The ruling party should think of the national interest as the biggest one, but not regard the suspension of Sam Rainsy’s immunity as a priority,” he said.

Kek Galabru, president of the rights group Licadho, said the move to strike Sam Rainsy’s immunity was an act that would frighten other parliamentarians, who “do not dare to speak out or express their opinion.”

Source: http://www.voanews.com/khmer/2009-11-12-voa1.cfm?rss=topstories

CAMBODIA SHOULD LOOK WEST AND EAST AT THE SAME TIME IN THE DEFENSE OF HER TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY

November 12, 2009





CAMBODIA SHOULD LOOK WEST AND EAST AT THE SAME TIME

IN THE DEFENSE OF HER TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY



The CPP-dominated National Assembly is planning to suspend my parliamentary immunity on Monday, November 16. There will be a special parliamentary session with the lifting of my immunity being the only topic on the agenda.

I expected this move by the Hun Sen government. It proves how subservient the Cambodian authorities are to the Vietnamese government. On November 4, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung “proposed that the Cambodian government take due measures to deal with [Sam] Rainsy's acts of sabotage and not permit similar cases to occur, as they negatively affect the fine relations between the two nations.” See official statement from Hanoi at http://www.nhandan.com.vn/english/news/041109/domestic_vs.htm

On October 25, as an elected representative of the Cambodian people, I had only expressed my support for, and solidarity with, Cambodian farmers who are victims of land grabbing along the Vietnamese border in Svay Rieng province. See the context of my intervention context and evidence at http://tinyurl.com/ykblbpr

The attempt to silence me by lifting my parliamentary immunity also shows that the current Phnom Penh government totally ignores King Father Norodom Sihanouk's concern about Cambodian farmers losing their rice fields because of border encroachments by the Vietnamese authorities as I elaborated in my November 7 letter to the Retired King. See related documents at http://tinyurl.com/yzcxqyq and at http://tinyurl.com/yec3hw5

Vietnam's Prime Minister apparently blew out of proportion my symbolic gesture to morally come to help Cambodian farmers who are victims of local injustices involving Vietnamese authorities. But this incident could also show that I embarrassed Vietnam by shedding light on a much bigger issue with strategic implications and much higher stakes than one may first consider.

The recent appointment of fugitive Thai national Thaksin Shinawatra as an adviser to the Cambodian government in order to exacerbate tensions between Cambodia and Thailand may be just a ploy to divert the public attention from much more serious problems concerning Cambodia’s territorial integrity, which appears to be more vulnerable on our country’s eastern border than on the western border with Thailand because of Vietnam’s more subtle expansionist policies and Hun Sen’s subservient attitude towards Hanoi.



Sam Rainsy

Member of Parliament

人权团体呼吁制止对昂山素姬审判

Suu Kyi release met with skepticism

Nov 10, 2009 (DVB)–Comments made by a Burmese government official that detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi could soon be released have been greeted with skepticism by party members.

The announcement was made by the director general of Burma’s foreign ministry, Min Lwin, as he boarded a plane in Manila, Philippines. He said that the junta may allow her to play a role in elections next year.

Suu Kyi was sentenced in August to a further 18 months under house arrest, which looked set to keep her away from any involvement in the elections.

Members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party have however remained wary of heightened expectations following the comment.

“I am a little bit cautious about when and how she would be free” said Nyo Ohn Myint, foreign affairs secretary of the NLD–Liberated Areas (NLD-LA), while NLD spokesperson Nyan Win said that he “hopes it comes true”.

Several clauses in Burma’s controversial 2008 constitution appear to prohibit her involvement in elections. The government has said that anyone married to a foreigner or previously incarcerated cannot compete for office, and Suu Kyi falls into both those categories.

“The problem is, the 2008 constitution does not really allow the other political stakeholders to have their say, but we will decide our priorities when she is free,” Nyo Ohn Myint said.

The NLD won more than 80 percent of votes in the last elections to be held in Burma in 1990, following which Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.

The last time she was free, in 2003, a convoy she was travelling in was attacked by junta-backed thugs, who killed around 70 of her supporters. The government again imprisoned her following the incident, citing fears over her own safety.

Khin Ohnmar, from the Thailand-based Burma Partnership, said however that it was unlikely she would be freed anytime soon.

“I doubt they will actually release her, and from their side it’s too soon to give in after the meeting with the Americans,” she said.

Last week the most senior-level US delegation to visit Burma since 1995 met with both the Burmese prime minister and Suu Kyi.

Since the US announced a new era of engagement with the regime, the military generals appear to have somewhat eased restrictions on political opposition in Burma, although some critics believe this to be merely a public relations exercise.

“It may be the same old tactic, but letting her go is so dangerous for the regime because people would be questioning why, and that’s a real problem for them,” said Khin Ohmar.

Reporting by Joseph Allchin

Source: DVB English

Thaksin not allowed to involve in politics - spokesman

By Deutsche Presse Agentur

Fugitive ex-Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra will not be permitted to engage in politics during his stay as it would be contrary to Cambodia's constitution


Government spokesman Phay Siphan said Thaksin is in Phnom Penh for economic reasons.

"He is here for economic reasons, not for any activities related to politics," he said. "You must understand that Cambodia does not allow (foreign nationals) to do politics within Cambodia at all."

Phay Siphan said Thaksin would stay at least two or three days. He was scheduled to deliver an address to Cambodian economists Thursday.

Thaksin on Tuesday arrived in Phnom Penh, the first visit to the country after being appointed as economic advisor to Cambodian government and prime minister. He is scheduled to give a lecture on economy on Thursday.

Source: The Nation

Thaksin arrives in Cambodia

Fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra arrived in Cambodia on Tuesday morning to carry out his new role as economic adviser to the government, the Cambodian government said.

Cambodia announced Thaksin's appointment last week, sparking a dispute that has led Thailand and Cambodia to recall their respective ambassadors and has deepened tensions after a series of deadly border clashes in the past year.

Thailand has also said it could seal the frontier if Thaksin is not extradited, but Cambodian ministry of foreign affairs spokesman Kuoy Kong said his country was "not concerned about these issues".

"We will not extradite him (Thaksin). We already clarified this case because he is a political victim,'' Kuoy Kong said on Tuesday.

Thaksin is living in foreign locations including Dubai to avoid a two-year jail term for conflict of interest while prime minister handed down by the Supreme Court in September 2008. He sksipped bail before the veredict was announced.

He justified his trip to Cambodia -- whose prime minister Hun Sen is a close friend and political ally -- in an open letter published on his website late Monday.

"I am not helping Cambodia to compete with Thailand. I will never do things to hurt my country no matter how badly I disagree with the government," he said.

Thaksin, the former owner of Manchester City football club, was due to give a a speech to hundreds of Cambodian economics experts in the capital on Thursday. He has not said how long he will be in Phnom Penh.

Thaksin won two elections and remains a massively influential figure in Thai politics, stirring up mass protests by so-called "Red Shirt" supporters against the current government.

His presence on Thailand's doorstep is the closest he has come since he last fled the country in August 2008.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said the government has already given instructions to begin seeking the extradition of Thaksin from Cambodia.

Mr Abhisit was speaking after receiving confirmation that the fugitive politician had arrived at Phnom Penh airport this morning.

He admitted it would be difficult since Thaksin's exact whereabouts were not known, and particularly so if the former prime minister made only brief visits.

The prime minister called on the Cambodian government to think again why so many things that have caused Thai-Cambodian relations to deteriorate happened during the past two weeks.

Mr Abhisit also threatened to review the two countries' extradition treaty if Cambodia fails to comply.

"Cambodia must realise that they have triggered a conflict of interest and criticised the Thai judicial system," he told reporters.

Thai government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn said the cabinet had also agreed to cancel an oil and gas exploration deal with Cambodia that was signed during Thaksin's time in power.

Mr Abhisit stressed that the cabinet decision to revoke a memorandum of understading with Cambodia involved only the disputed maritime boundery area, not the disputed border area surrounding Phreah Vihear temple.

Source: Bangkok Post

သမၼတ အုိဘားမား စင္ကာပူမွာ အာဆီယံ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔ ေတြ႕ဆုံမည္

10 November 2009


သမၼတ အုိဘားမား (Obama) ဟာ အာရွကိုထြက္မယ့္ သူ႕ရဲ႕ခရီးစဥ္ကို တရက္ေရႊ႕ဆုိင္းၿပီး ၾကာသပေတးေန႔မွာ ထြက္ဖုိ႔ စီစဥ္ထားပါတယ္။ ဂ်ပန္၊ စင္ကာပူ၊ တ႐ုတ္နဲ႔ ေတာင္ကိုရီးယားမွာလည္း ၀င္ေရာက္နားမွာျဖစ္ၿပီး စင္ကာပူမွာေတာ့ အာရွနဲ႔ ပစိဖိတ္ ႏုိင္ငံမ်ား စီးပြားေရး ပူးေပါင္းေဆာင္ရြက္မႈ ညီလာခံကိုလည္း တက္ေရာက္မွာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာ ျမန္မာ အပါအ၀င္ အာဆီယံအဖြဲ႕၀င္ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြနဲ႔လည္း သီးသန္႔ေတြ႕ဆုံဖို႔ ရွိတယ္လို႔ ဆုိပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစုံကို ေဒၚလွလွသန္းက တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။

Read more:http://www.voanews.com/burmese/2009-11-10-voa1.cfm

US President LBJ & Burmese Dictator General Ne Win

Source: Citizen Journalist

Govt: Thaksin interview 'offensive to the monarchy'

Former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra made very offensive references to the monarchy in an interview with The Times published online on Monday and gave inaccurate, misleading information, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said on Monday.

Thaksin was interviewed by the Asia editor of The Times, Richard Parry, at his home in Dubai and the transcript was published on the Timesonline website on Monday.

The foreign minister said he found many of Thaksin's comments in the interview to be strongly offensive, inaccurate and unacceptable by the majority of people.

The interview reflected Thaksin's uneasiness about not being able to persuade people to be on his side, Mr Kasit said. He believed Thaksin, in giving the interview, had a hidden objective.

The Foreign Ministry would issue a statement to the foreign media setting the facts straight, he said.

The Justice Ministry would decide whether Thaksin would be charged with lese majeste, Mr Kasit said.

Thepthai Senpong, spokesman for Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva, also slammed Thaksin over his latest interview, saying it was most offensive to the royal institution.

Richard Lloyd Parry, the asia editor for The Times , interviewed Thaksin in Dubai. He reported that Thaksin called for reform of the monarchy and had spoken of a future "shining" era when HRH Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn, the son of His Majesty the King, takes the throne.

Mr Thepthai called on all parties to take action on this matter, saying that it affected the feelings of Thai people.

Democrat Party spokesman Buranat Samutarak said that this is not the first time Thaksin has offended the high institution.

In the interview, Thaksin said that His Majesty the King was above politics but that "circles" around the palace were interfering with the running of the country.

"That's the problem in Thailand. The monarchy is not the problem. The monarchy is good for Thailand. Thailand needs to have a monarchy but it should not be abused or played by the palace circles," he was quoted as saying.

Asked if the "royal institution" needed reform, he said: "Yes, yes."

"I can assure you His Majesty is above [politics], but those in the circle have a network," he said.

"They want to get rid of me because they say I am trying to turn Thailand into a republic and topple the monarchy. That's not true. I have a very high respect for the monarchy and royal family."

Thaksin later issued a statement saying his interview as reported was a "complete distortion'' of his comments and caused misunderstanding and confusion to readers and the Thai people.

"It (the article) was a complete distortion of my interview. The falsified article has caused confusion among the readers and the Thai people. The headline made by Times Online is not true. I never said that in the interview," Thaksin said in the statement.

The fugitive politician said that his comments made during the interview were not offensive to any institution. On the contrary, during the interview he defended the monarchy as being above politics and said the Thai people adore the institution. Nobody should implicate the monarchy in politics, he said.

"I am very upset with the way Timesonline treated my interview. This happened despite the fact I stressed to the interviewer that the monarchy is highly-placed and delicate and that he should report exactly what I said.

"Therefore, I condemn Timesonline for publishing this false and confusing article.

"I would like to repeat again that my family and I are loyal to His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen and, like all Thai people, ready to sacrifice our lives to protect the monarchy."

Source: Bangkok Post

ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြ လႊတ္ရင္ ဂ်ပန္ အကူအညီ ပိုေပးမည္

08 November 2009


ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မတိုင္ခင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးဖို႔ ဂ်ပန္ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ယူကီအုိ ဟတုိယာမ (Yukio Hatoyama) က တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ပါတယ္။

ေရွ႕ႏွစ္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ က်င္းပမယ့္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲကို ဒီမိုကေရစီ နည္းလမ္းတက် က်င္းပသြားတာကို ဂ်ပန္က ျမင္လိုေၾကာင္းနဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ မတိုင္ခင္မွာ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ အပါအဝင္ ႏိုင္ငံေရး အက်ဥ္းသားေတြ အားလံုးကို ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးဖို႔ဟာ အင္မတန္ အေရးႀကီးေၾကာင္း ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံကို ေရာက္ေနတဲ့ ျမန္မာဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးသိန္းစိန္ကို ဂ်ပန္ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ မစၥတာ ဟတုိယာမက ေျပာခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

တုိက်ဳိၿမိဳ႕ေတာ္မွာ ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဂ်ပန္နဲ႔ မဲေခါင္ျမစ္ဝွမ္းေဒသ ႏိုင္ငံေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြရဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာ ဂ်ပန္ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္နဲ႔ ျမန္မာဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္တို႔ စေနေန႔က ေဘးထြက္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တာ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာနဲ႔ အေမရိကန္ အစိုးရၾကားမွာ ထိေတြ႕ဆက္ဆံဖို႔ လုပ္လာတဲ့ အေပၚမွာလည္း ဂ်ပန္က ႀကိဳဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။

အျပဳသေဘာေဆာင္တဲ့ ေျခလွမ္းေတြလွမ္းရင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ လူသားခ်င္း စာနာတဲ့ ေထာက္ပံ့မႈေတြကို ဂ်ပန္က တျဖည္းျဖည္း တိုးေပးသြားမယ္လို႔ ဂ်ပန္ဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္က ျမန္မာဝန္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးသိန္းစိန္ကို ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးသိန္းစိန္ဟာ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံကို ၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္ ကတည္းကဆိုရင္ ပထမဆံုး လာေရာက္တဲ့ ျမန္မာေခါင္းေဆာင္တေယာက္ ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံက လူသားခ်င္း စာနာမႈနဲ႔ ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးတိုးတက္ေရး အကူအညီေတြကို ေပးေနတဲ့ ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ငံက ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြက္ ၂၀၀၈ ခုႏွစ္က ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ ေထာက္ပံ့ေၾကး အေမရိကန္ေဒၚလာ ၁၃ သန္းေက်ာ္ ရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။

Source: VOA

Embassy on alert but life goes on

A senior Thai security officer in Bangkok said yesterday that intelligence and security agencies were drafting contingency plans that included the downsizing of staff at the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh, as well as an evacuation in case the diplomatic tensions translate into another anti-Thai riot.

Thai businessmen in Cambodia have been briefed about the situation and will continue to remain engaged with embassy staff for regular updates, the officer said on condition of anonymity.


Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh//epa

But while the diplomatic fallout has forced officials there to look over their shoulders, no one thinks diplomatic tension will translate into another anti-Thai riot as was seen in January 2003 when the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh was torched along with Thai-owned businesses and other establishments.

According to the officer - who is observing the situation very closely - the embassy in Phnom Penh has been instructed to continue with standard operating procedures for the time being.

About 50 armed police and soldiers are posted in front of the embassy, said the officer, who added that there were no signs of any sort of protest in the making.

"Unlike the anti-Thai riot [in 2003], the Cambodia government appears to be taking adequate preventive measures to prevent a similar incident," said the officer.

"But then again, public protests are often orchestrated by political figures. If someone wants to see the embassy attacked again, they can set things in motion," said the officer.

Changes to standard operating prodcedures will depend on the situation on the ground. But as of yesterday there had been no restrictions on the movements of officers assigned to the embassy, according to another intelligence officer.

Thailand's 2nd Army Region commander, Lt-General Weewalit Jorasamrit, said the situation along the border near the Preah Vihear Temple remained normal.

"Contrary to some news reports, Cambodia has not at all called for reinforcements. We have not increased the number of our troops either," he said.

Crossing along the Thai-Cambodia common border also continued as usual yesterday as local residents and small traders carried on with their daily activities.

More than 5,000 Cambodian vendors and workers travelled past the Ban Khlong Leuk checkpoint yesterday to earn their livings in Na Klua market.

At their stalls, the Cambodian traders were seen glued to TV to check news updates about Thai-Cambodian relations.

Thai gamblers, however, were clearly reluctant to travel to casinos in Cambodia's Poi Pet.

Not many Thais went past Aranyaprathet to the casinos yesterday.

The tension has also taken its toll on the air-travel industry, as some foreign visitors heading to Cambodia via Thailand decided to remain in Thailand for the duration of their holidays.

Source: The Nation

THAI-CAMBODIA ROW: Poll shows surge in support for Abhisit

The popularity rating of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva tripled after his decisive action of downgrading diplomatic ties with Cambodia, according to an Abac Poll survey released yesterday.



In comparison to 23.3 per cent in the survey in September, Abhisit's popularity leaped to 68.6 per cent.

The prime minister was most popular in the South (88.2 per cent), followed by the Central region (68.9 per cent), Bangkok (68.8 per cent) and the North (64.6 per cent).

About 53.1 per cent in the Northeast voiced support for his leadership.

Factors attributing to the rise in popularity include the sentiment against Cambodia's attack on the Thai judicial system and concern over the consequences of the Cambodians' appointment of fugitive ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra as an adviser.

Source: The Nation

Suu Kyi rejects meeting with party

Nov 6, 2009 (DVB)–Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday rejected a meeting with members of her party on the grounds that the party’s detained chairman would not be present, state media said.

Senior United States official Kurt Campbell had reportedly requested the meeting between Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) party prior to him meeting with Suu Kyi on Wednesday.

Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years, has so far been barred from meeting with members of her party.

“In accordance with the request of Mr. Kurt Michael Campbell, the Government made plans to arrange a meeting between Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD [Central Executive Committee] members before meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.

The government said however that party chairman, Tin Oo, who was put under house arrest along with Suu Kyi following the 2003 Depayin massacre, would not be permitted to attend.

“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi replied that she did not want to meet them because not all CEC members were included; but she expressed thanks, all the same,” the newspaper said.

Nyo Ohn Myint, foreign affairs secretary of the NLD-Liberated Areas (NLD-LA) said the decision was in line with NLD policy on all-inclusive dialogue.

“The collective decision is very important,” he said. “The exclusion of Tin Oo is politically damaging to the positive atmosphere the government is trying to project.”

“[Suu Kyi] cannot transform Burma into a democracy on her own; she needs all the executive committee. That’s why she thinks that this is not an appropriate time to meet with the CEC without Tin Oo.”

The US has attempted to dampen expectations of a quick result from its recent trip to Burma, with the Campbell delegation reiterating that dialogue between the two countries would be a difficult and slow process.

The junta’s decision to bar Tin Oo was, according to Nyo Ohn Myint, a sign that the international community has an uphill struggle in pushing for democratic reform in Burma.

“The regime is trying to improve its public relations with the international community but it is still showing that it is reluctant to improve or provide any positive sign towards national reconciliation,” he said.

He said however that he was “very positive, very impressed” with the US visit, which was the most senior-level of its kind since 1995.

Reporting by Francis Wade

Source: DVB

Washington to take steps to improve ties with Myanmar: U.S. official

YANGON, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The United States is prepared to take steps to improve relationship with Myanmar but the process must be based on reciprocal and concrete efforts by the Myanmar government, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell told the press Wednesday evening.

Campbell made the remarks at the Yangon International Airport at the end of his two-day visit to Myanmar.

He described his Myanmar trip as an exploratory mission designed to explain to key stakeholders inside the country the results of the U.S. policy review towards Myanmar.

He reaffirmed U.S.'s commitment to a dialogue among the government, the opposition, and the ethnic groups, saying that the goal of such dialogue would be national reconciliation and a fully inclusive political process in Myanmar.

Underscoring his country's support for the Myanmar people, Campbell reaffirmed the U.S.'s continuing commitment to assist them in recovering from the effects of cyclone Nargis and combating the spread of infectious disease.

Accompanied by Deputy Assistant Secretary Scot Marciel, Campbell arrived Nay Pyi Taw Tuesday on a two-day mission to Myanmar to continue dialogue with the country and Campbell's trip is marked as the highest-level one to Myanmar of the U.S. in 14 years since 1995.

During his Myanmar trip, Campbell met with Myanmar Prime Minister General Thein Sein, Information Minister Brigadier-General Kyaw Hsan, Science and Technology Minister U Thaung, Chief Justice U Aung Toe who is also Chairman of both the Commission for Drafting State Constitution and for Holding Nationwide Referendum as well as some ethnic peace groups.

While in Yangon, Campbell met with house-confined General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) Aung San Suu Kyi at the Inya Lake Hotel for more than two hours under the arrangement made by the Myanmar government.

Moreover, Campbell met with the leadership of some political parties including the NLD.

In September, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Washington would shift its policy towards Myanmar by direct engagement with it while keeping sanctions in place.

Source: Xinhua News

Thailand cancels oil-and-gas MoU with Cambodia

The decision came one day after Thailand downgraded its bilateral relations with Cambodia to protest Cambodia's appointment of ex-Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra as its economic adviser.

Abhisit government recalled its ambassador to Cambodia on Thursday and suggest their female envoys and the families to return home.

Cambodia immediately followed suit by recalling its ambassador to Thailand.

Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said in a phone-in interview from Tokyo on Friday that Thailand decided to revoke Thai-Cambodia memorandum of understanding on the overlapping continental shelf area signed in June 2001 under premiership of then PM Thaksin.

"The MoU was pushed by Thaksin and he knew the details of the negotiations. We cannot negotiate anymore based on this MoU as it will affect our economy and security," he said.

Kasit was attending the two-day Mekong sub-region summit in Japan.

Kasit said there was not much progress made since the MoU was signed, therefore, the government felt that it should be scrapped so that it can find new ways to start afresh in dealing with the Cambodian side.

The joint agreement allows Thailand and Cambodia, which share 26,000 square kilometres of overlapping area, to delimit and develop as a joint development area for oil and gas exploration.

Source: The Nation

Aung San Suu Kyi appears in public for the first in years

Source: The Nation

Thailand recalls ambassador to Cambodia over Thaksin job

The government recalled its ambassador to Cambodia on Thursday after Phnom Penh gave a job to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, further raising tensions between the countries.


File photo of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thailand recalled its ambassador to Cambodia on Thursday after Phnom Penh appointed fugitive Thaksin as an economic adviser, a senior official said.

The Cambodian government announced on Wednesday night it had appointed Thaksin an economic adviser, riling Bangkok, which is trying to bring Thaksin home to serve a two year jail sentence handed down by the Supreme Court, three years after he was ousted in a coup.

"We have recalled the ambassador as the first diplomatic retaliation to let the Cambodian government know the dissatisfaction of the Thai people," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters.

"Last night's announcement by the Cambodian government was harmful to the Thai judicial system and really affected Thai public sentiment," Mr Abhisit said.

He said aid to Cambodia would also be halted, but checkpoints along the border between the two countries would remain open.; Ordinary commerce between Thai and Camvodian people would not be affected.

A government official said earlier that the ambassador to Phnom Penh would be recalled by Thursday evening in retaliation for Cambodia's "interference" in Thai politics.

"The reason is that the appointment of Thaksin is considered interfering in our internal politics because Thaksin is still actively involved in politics," Chavanond Intarakomalyasut, secretary to Thailand's foreign affairs minister, told AFP.

Democrat Party spokesman Thepthai Senpong said Thaksin's new job with the Cambodian government was no more than a consolation gift from a friend.

Mr Thepthai said he did not think Thaksin would actually do anything.

It was an internal matter for the Cambodoian government and the Thai government would not try to interfere.

However, if Thaksin happened to stay in Cambodia, the government would have to seek his extradition, he said.

Interior Minister and Bhumjaithai Party leader Chavarat Charnveerakul said Thaksin's appointment would be unlikely to affect the Thai economy.

"Even if he were not economic adviser to the Cambodian government, he would still try to get closer to Thailand," Mr Chavarat said.

Finance Minister Korn Chatikavanij said he was more worried about what damage Thaksin would inflict on the Cambodian economy.

Thaksin said on his that he felt honoured by the appointment and thanked Prime Minister Hun Sen.

“I have just received a copy of King Sihamoni’s royal appointment from Mr Hun Sen. I thank Mr Hun Sen for giving me such an honour. But I would have more enjoyment if I ccould work to eradicate Thai people’s poverty,” Thaksin tweeted on his twitter account on Thursday morning.

In a statement read on state television yesterday, the Cambodian government said all charges against Thaksin were “politically motivated”, and said it would not allow his extradition to Thailand if he decides to stay in Cambodia or travels in and out of Cambodia to fulfill his duties.

Noppadon Pattama, a former foreign minister and close associate of Thaksin, said Mr Hun Sen appointed Thaksin economic adviser because he could see his potential.

He rejected criticism that Thaksin had achieved his target strategy of a “world surrounding Thailand”. Mr Noppadon said the world would not surround Thailand and attack the Thai government, but the world would try to help resolve Thailand's problems.

Thaksin remains a hugely influential figure in Thailand, where he has stirred up mass protests by the so-called "Red Shirt" movement against Abhisit's government in the past year.

Ties between Cambodia and Thailand have been difficult since July 2008 amid an ongoing border conflict over land surrounding an 11th century temple which has claimed several lives.

Source: Bangkok Post

NLD Statement regarding US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell

Former Foreign Minister U Win Aung passed away

Former Foreign Minister U Win Aung passed away in Insein jail at this early morning, said sources close to his family. U Win Aung was arrested after former spy chief general Khin Nyunt was arrested in 2004but later being house arrest for two years. He was known to be general Khin Nyunt’s special ambassador to ASEAN and the regime.



According to the source, he was brought to the special court and U Win Aung has been sentenced to seven years in jail by a special court after being charged with misuse of authority by the ruling military regime. Source close to family who demanded anonymity, said Win Aung was being held in Yangon's Insein prison until he passed away this morning.

After he was fired from foreign minister post, he was asked to stay at home as house arrest from 2004 to 2006.

Regime fears that he would have crossed the Thai-Burma border in 2006 while he was visiting his hometown, Tavoy, southern Burma. Later in April 2006, police chief Brig. Gen. Khin Yi confirmed sentence had been passed on Win Aung but declined to elaborate.

Source: RFA/BDD

Photo credit: http://www.google.co.th/imgres?imgurl=http://pib.nic.in/archieve

Senior U.S. diplomat to visit Myanmar

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell will visit Myanmar next week, U.S. State Department announced on Friday.

"Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell and Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Marciel are scheduled to travel to Burma Nov. 3 and 4," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

"They expect to meet with senior government officials and with members of the opposition, including Aung San Suu Kyi as well as representatives of ethnic groups," said the spokesman.

Campbell's visit came one month after the Obama administration held a senior-level dialogue with representatives of the Myanmar's leadership in New York on Sept. 29.

According to Wood, the visit's aim is to "continue this dialogue."

Citing Myanmar's military junta of crackdown on democracy, the United States has downgraded its level of representation in Myanmar from ambassador to charge d'Affaires and has imposed broad sanctions since the 1988 military coup.

Following months of policy-reviewing, the Obama administration wants to begin a direct dialogue with Myanmar in order to "lay out the path to better relations," said Campbell in a recent speech relating to U.S. policy toward Myanmar.

According to the senior diplomat, the administration will continue to support a "unified, peaceful, prosperous and democratic" Myanmar that respects the human rights of its citizens, and press Myanmar to comply with its international obligations, including full compliance with the UN Security Council Resolutions of 1874 and 1718.

"If Burma makes meaningful progress toward these goals, it will be possible to improve the relationship with the United States in a step-by-step process. We recognize that this will likely be a long and difficult process and we are prepared to sustain our efforts on this front," said Campbell.

Source: Xinhua News

Visits to neighbours a must, says Chavalit

The Burmese and Malaysian governments will not hesitate to host Puea Thai Party chairman Chavalit Yongchaiyudh if he visits the two countries as planned, according to a close aide of the general.

Lt Gen Piratch Swamiwas said Gen Chavalit is expected to travel to Burma around the middle of this month and meet Snr Gen Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council.

He will later visit Malaysia where he is scheduled to meet Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, said Lt Gen Piratch.

His visits to the neighbouring countries would be closely watched by the government, which was embarrassed by his recent trip to Cambodia, whose leader Hun Sen expressed sympathy towards former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and offered him a home in Cambodia.

Gen Chavalit said yesterday that a trip to Burma was a must because of his close ties with both Gen Than Shwe and Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein. "Gen Than Shwe and I are like brothers to each other. For Gen Thein Sein, we are each other's fans," he said.

Gen Chavalit said the coalition government was wrong to condemn Burma over opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest.

He said his visit to Malaysia was meant to pursue bilateral cooperation with Kuala Lumpur and to stem the tide of the southern unrest.

Gen Chavalit has claimed that solving the southern strife is one of the reasons why he joined the Puea Thai Party. He would visit the region on Tuesday.

He said building trust is instrumental in bringing peace to the violence-torn region and in promoting peaceful coexistence between the peoples of different cultures and faiths.

He said the government has failed in its mission which has become a cause for concern for the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Democrat Party spokesman Buranat Samutarak yesterday warned Gen Chavalit to avoid taking steps which could complicate Thailand's relations with two of its closest neighbours.

He said Gen Chavalit should refrain from doing things which would allow the two neighbouring countries to interfere in Thailand's internal affairs.

"I hope that his trips will not cause any discomfort like his visit to Cambodia did," he said.

Source: Bangkok Post

Burmese junta’s another pressure against Karen National Union

BDD

Thai security authorities had raided the houses of Saw Tamala Baw, David Thackbaw, P'doh Artoe, Col. Soe Soe, Saw Nah Dah and Col. Paw Doh were raided this morning, said sources close to KNU.

They found 3 bullets and barrel of short gun at Nah Dah's house and took his wife for further interrogation. Those respective leaders were not at the home at the time of raid. It seems that they continue their search until 3 PM today.

The operation is done by Special Police from Bangkok on the complaint of Burmese government that Thailand is harboring KNU and opposition leaders on Thai Soil. Some KNU leaders think that it might be related to recent ASEAN meeting.

SPDC recently backed DKBA, KNLA breakaway group to attack KNU brigade 5th and 6th after DKBA-SPDC troops ran over brigade 7th area and KNLA headquarters in June 2009. There are so many interest groups in Thailand to pressure against the KNU and KNLA forces; former army officials who established various businesses with Burmese military regime, Thai opposition party and construction companies and business groups that get financial benefits from Burma.

အေမရိကန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရးဌာန ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ အဆုိးဆုံး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေတြထဲ ျမန္မာပါ၀င္

27 October 2009


ကမၻာေပၚမွာ ဘာသာေရး လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ကို အဆုိး၀ါးဆုံး ခ်ဳိးေဖာက္တဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေတြထဲမွာ ျမန္မာ၊ တ႐ုတ္နဲ႔ က်ဴးဘားႏုိင္ငံတုိ႔ ပါ၀င္ၾကတယ္လို႔ အေမရိကန္ ႏုိင္ငံျခားေရး ၀န္ႀကီးဌာနက အစီရင္ခံစာ ထုတ္ျပန္လုိက္ပါတယ္။

Source: VOA

U.S. releases disputed annual int'l religious report

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Monday released its annual international religious report, reiterating its accusation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Iran for their so-called continuing religious repression.

Speaking of Iran's religious situation, the report claimed that "Respect for religious freedom in the country continued to deteriorate. ... Government controlled broadcast and print media intensified negative campaigns against religious minorities."

On religious freedom in the DPRK, the report said that "genuine religious freedom does not exist" in the country.

"An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 persons were believed to be held in political prison camps in remote areas, some for religious reason. Prison conditions are harsh, torture and starvation are common," the report said.

Apart from Iran and the DPRK, both in tense relations with the United States for decades, the report also slammed Myanmar, Sudan, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan for their alleged serious violations of religious freedom over the past year.

The rather disputed report also put China on the list of countries of particular concern.

In her news briefing on the 2009 Annual Report on International Religious Report, Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton said that "It is our hope that the ... report will encourage existing religious freedom movements around the world and promote dialogue among governments and within societies on how best to accommodate religious communities and protect each individual's right to believe or not believe as that individual sees fit."

The United States, who always preens itself as leader of democracy and human rights and is blind to its violations of human rights at home and abroad and ill-treatment of prisoners of war, has long rebuked religious and freedom situation of other countries.

In response, many countries, including China, have always and categorically rejected the U.S. accusations.

Source: Xinhua News

Burmese junta's old friend: Chavalit'd be back?

Chavalit draws govt ire
PM slams Puea Thai chairman's 'tactics'


Puea Thai Party chairman Chavalit Yongchaiyudh has sparked a furious backlash from the government by insisting he will embark on trips to Burma and Malaysia in the wake of his remarks about ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra being welcome "any time" in Cambodia.



The government, which insists Gen Chavalit discredited the Thai administration by his visit with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, has made it clear the opposition party politician should not meddle in diplomatic affairs.

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya yesterday asked Gen Chavalit to put the national interest before personal benefits ahead of his plans to visit other countries.

The government had no authority to block his travel plans but it would not succumb to pressure from other countries as a result of his visits, the prime minister said. Gen Chavalit will visit the lower South on Nov 3 followed by unscheduled trips to Malaysia and Burma, his close aide, Lt Gen Piratch Swamiwas, said yesterday.Gen Chavalit's first foreign trip after assuming the chairmanship of the opposition party was to Cambodia last Wednesday. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told him he welcomed Thaksin to Cambodia.

Hun Sen also said on Friday after coming to Thailand for the Asean summit that the Cambodian government would not hand over Thaksin if Thailand sought his extradition.

Mr Abhisit responded by asking Hun Sen to decide between personal relations and bilateral benefits with Thailand.

Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban met Hun Sen on Saturday to discuss issues involving Thaksin.

Hun Sen promised to stop saying anything that might damage Thailand, Mr Suthep told reporters yesterday in Cha-am district in Phetchaburi.

Mr Kasit also sent a stronger message to Gen Chavalit in his bid to have the Puea Thai chairman reconsider his diplomatic strategy.

"You should ask Gen Chavalit whether his visits to neighbouring countries will benefit Thailand," the foreign minister told reporters. "He should ask himself about what he is doing. Is it serving somebody?"

After the talks on Saturday between Mr Suthep and the Cambodian leader, the Foreign Ministry will submit evidence to Phnom Penh regarding the legal action taken against Thaksin.

It would be "factual" regarding the legal process the government was taking on the ousted prime minister, the foreign minister said.

Mr Kasit said he hoped that after the formal explanation, there would be no conflict between the two countries over Thaksin.

Lt Gen Piratch shrugged off the government's criticism and insisted Gen Chavalit had no plan to scrap his visits to Burma and Malaysia.

"He will meet leaders and will criticise no one," the aide said. "What Gen Chavalit is doing is not for anybody in particular. He used to give suggestions to the government but the government never listened to him."

Gen Chavalit said last week he would use his personal connections with leaders of neighbouring countries to clear their misunderstandings about Thailand.

He claimed the foreign policy under the Democrat-led government had caused strains.

The Cambodian prime minister's remark favouring Thaksin continued to upset a group of 40 senators who urged the government take a tougher diplomatic line on Cambodia.

Source: Bangkok Post

Ball now in Cambodia's court - Thai PM

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Monday that the "ball was in Cambodia's court," suggesting that it was up to Prime Minister Hun Sen to strengthen or weaken the bilateral ties following verbal spat between the leaders over the weekend.

Speaking to Nation Multimedia Group's editor-in-chief, Suthichai Yoon, Abhisit said there would be no diplomatic protest or recalling of Thai ambassadors following a statement from Hun Sen that he would welcomed his old friend Thaksin Shinawatra to Cambodia.

The interview will be broadcast on World Pulse television programme to be air nationwide on Tuesday evening on Channel 9,

Hun Sen had said he would not extradite Thaksin to face prison terms in Thailand because he considered his crime to be political in nature and added that he would make the fugitive premier his economic advisor.

Abhisit said Hun Sen needed to hear all the facts before any conclusion could be reach.

The Cambodian needed to know what law Thaksin had violated and then decide as to whether Thaksin should be deported to Thailand if and when he set foot in Cambodia.

Abhisit dismissed suggestion that Hun Sen statement spoiled the 15th Asean Summit, which was hosted by Thailand over this past weekend, maintaining that he was satisfied with the outcome.

None of the leaders at the summit asked about Hun Sen's statement, said Abhisit.

Abhisit also referred to Chavalit Yongchaiyudh's mission to Cambodia after which he revealed Hun Sen's decision to welcome Thaksin with an open arm.

Abhisit suggested in the interview that that the Pua Thai political bigwig needs to reevaluate his own conduct to see if his action had hurt or help ThaiCambodia relations.

Abhisit said he was willing to talk to Thaksin on national reconciliation provided that the fugitive premier return to the country and accept the country's justice system and the decision to convicted him of fraud and corruption.

"If he is not willing to abide by our law then what's the use of talking to him," Abhisit asked.

Source: The Nation

EU to raise more fund aid for Myanmar

YANGON, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) will raise 35-million-euro (43.75 million U.S. dollars) fund aid for Myanmar for a five-year vocational training and food security plan project in cyclone-hit areas as well as other regions in the country, diplomatic sources said on Monday.

EU expects that the fund could be raised up to 100 million euros with the help of international donors, the sources said, adding that the fund will be provided through social organizations in Myanmar.

In 2008, the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) provided an aid of 54.5 million U.S. dollars to Myanmar for running humanitarian programs in cyclone-hit areas in the country.

Of the total, 40.5 million dollars were used for humanitarian projects, while the remaining 14 million dollars for food programs.

The fund for 2008 was up 105 percent compared with that for 2007 which amounted to 26.5 million dollars.

EU have been providing Myanmar with humanitarian assistance since 1994.

Deadly tropical cyclone Nargis hit five divisions and states --Ayeyawaddy, Yangon, Bago, Mon and Kayin on May 2 and May 3 last year, of which Ayeyawaddy and Yangon suffered the heaviest casualties and the worst infrastructural damage.

The storm killed 84,537 people, leaving 53,836 others missing and 19,359 others injured, according to official death toll.

Source: Xinhua News

ျမန္မာ့ႏုိင္ငံေရးထဲ ေဒၚစု ပါ၀င္ႏိုင္၊ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္သိန္းစိန္ ေျပာဆို

25 October 2009


ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံအတြင္း အမ်ဳိးသား ျပန္လည္သင့္ျမတ္ေရးအတြက္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ပါ၀င္ေဆာင္ရြက္ႏုိင္မယ္လို႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ထားတဲ့အေၾကာင္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစုိးရ ၀န္ႀကီးခ်ဳပ္ ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးသိန္းစိန္က အာဆီယံ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြကုိ ေျပာဆုိသြားပါတယ္။ ဒီေန႔ ၿပီးဆုံးသြားတဲ့ အာဆီယံ ထိပ္သီးေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကေန ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ဘာေတြမ်ား ရလဒ္ ထြက္ခဲ့သလဲ၊ ျမန္မာအစိုးရကေရာ ႏုိင္ငံေရး ေျပာင္းလဲမႈအတြက္ အာဆီယံကုိ ဘယ္လုိ ကတိက၀တ္ေတြမ်ား ေပးခဲ့သလဲ၊ အာဆီယံ ထိပ္သီးေဆြးေႏြးပဲြရွိတဲ့ ထုိင္းႏုိင္ငံ ခ်အမ္းၿမိဳ႕မွာ ေရာက္ေနတဲ့ ဗြီအုိေအ၀ုိင္းေတာ္သား ကုိသိန္းထုိက္ဦးကုိ ကုိသားၫြန္႔ဦးက ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္းၿပီး တင္ျပေပးထားပါတယ္။

Read more: http://www.voanews.com/burmese/2009-10-25-voa4.cfm

Does Hun Sen want to play in our political sandbox?

Friends and supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's iconic democracy crusader, may have felt insulted by Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen when he tried to compare her with his so-called "eternal friend", exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

"Many people are talking about Mrs Suu Kyi of Burma. Why can't I talk about the victim, Thaksin?" said Hun Sen during his face-off with the media on Friday when he arrived in Hua Hin for the Asean summit.

The Cambodian prime minister's attempt to liken Thaksin to Mrs Suu Kyi as both were victims of separate military coups in Thailand and Burma was simplistic and ignorant of the huge difference in characteristics and dedication to democracy between the two people, not to mention the political backgrounds leading to their overthrow.

"Without the coup d'etat in 2006, such a thing would not have happened," said Hun Sen.

But what would have happened without the coup then? No one then seemed to have the right answer although they agreed that the political stalemate would drag on until either side in the conflict - the Thaksin government on one side and the People's Alliance for Democracy on the other - lost their patience. Then what, bloodshed? But would Hun Sen care?

I don't think he would as the only thing he cares about is that he lost a powerful friend in Thailand who seemed to have done him and his family a lot of favours to the point that his wife had tears in her eyes when she learned about Thaksin's fate.

Hun Sen insisted his remarks about Thaksin did not constitute interference in Thailand's domestic affairs. He was quoted to have said: "This is just moral support from me. As one million Thai people of the red shirt group support Thaksin, why can't I, as a friend from afar, support Thaksin?"

But I beg to differ. His first remark, which was first conveyed to theThai people by former prime minister and Puea Thai Party chairman Chavalit Yongchaiyudh and then repeated upon his arrival here for the Asean summit, amounted to direct interference in Thailand's internal affairs. They also demonstrated his complete lack of any diplomatic decency and statesmanship.

Hun Sen's remarks should have pleased the Puea Thai Party and the red shirt people. In the meantime, they have incensed the yellow shirt people as well as many non-partisan Thais who despise a foreigner like a Cambodian interfering in our worst politically divisive issue.

It has been widely known that Hun Sen and Thaksin have had a close relationship through their business dealings and it was believed that the fugitive ex-premier had, on various occasions, slipped into Cambodia. But then why did the Cambodian premier choose to make public his sympathy and support for Thaksin now - at first through Gen Chavalit and then by himself at the Asean summit - despite the fact that the coup which toppled the Thaksin regime took place more than three years ago?

Was it intended to embarrass Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva? The answer was already loud and clear as Mr Abhisit appeared to be disturbed by Hun Sen's remarks and hit back at the latter. "What is the purpose of Prime Minster Hun Sen coming to Thailand?" said Mr Abhisit during a press conference on Friday. Was he coached by Gen Chavalit whose one-day visit to Phnom Penh, which came two days ahead of the Asean summit, seemed quite untimely if not suspicious?

As a shrewd politician who has survived in Cambodian politics for decades while many of his arch-rivals have all lost out or faded into oblivion, I don't think Hun Sen needs coaching. After having deliberately made unprovoked inflammatory remarks against Thailand on various occasions, including his order for Cambodian troops at the border to shoot any Thais who trespass on the disputed territories or his recent announcement to Cambodian students that he would tear up the Thai map pertaining to the Thai-Cambodian border if it does not correspond with the one held by Phnom Penh, Hun Sen, this time, may think that he wants to have a hand in Thai politics. And he has chosen to take Thaksin's side probably believing that the fugitive ex-premier will definitely be able to stage a political comeback in the not too distant future.

Even Thaksin himself is not certain whether or when he will be able to return in triumph.

Since Hun Sen has laid out his hand, it remains to be seen whether Thaksin and his Puea Thai Party will join hands with Cambodia to fulfil the fugitive ex-premier's wish for a political comeback.

* Veera Prateepchaikul is a former editor, Post Publishing Co Ltd.

Source: Bangkok Post