The State of Affairs

Bush renews sanctions against Myanmar

WASHINGTON: US President George W Bush on Tuesday renewed broad sanctions against military-ruled Myanmar because of its continued repression of opposition threatens US interests.

Bush formally notified Congress that he was extending the sanctions for one year because Myanmar had made little progress on human rights and democracy.

“These actions and policies, including its policies of committing large scale repression of the democratic opposition in Burma, are hostile to US interests and pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” Bush said in a message to Congress. “For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency with respect to Burma and maintain in force the sanctions against Burma to respond to this threat,” Bush said. The United States and Europe have shunned Myanmar and slapped sanctions on Yangon to induce the military government to release democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

In its annual human rights report issued in February, the US State Department said the former Burma’s “extremely poor human rights record worsened” during 2004.

Bomb allegations: The United States on Wednesday dismissed as “nonsense” allegations by Myanmar’s junta that the US played a key role in bombings that killed 19 people in the former Burma this month.

Myanmar officials said on Sunday the people who attacked the capital Yangon on May 7 had been trained and financed “by a world-famous organisation of a certain superpower nation” - an apparent reference to Washington and the CIA.

“This suggestion is nonsense, unworthy of dignifying with a comment,” a US embassy official in Bangkok told Reuters. “We condemn all violence such as this. They are cowardly and senseless acts,” the official added.

Thailand has also rejected Yangon’s insinuations that the bombers received some of their training on Thai soil, and that the military-grade explosives used in the attack may have come from Thailand. Other observers have questioned the credibility of Yangon’s investigation into the bombings. “So, according to the junta, CIA operatives based in Thailand trained dissidents to plant bombs in Rangoon. Who on earth is going to believe that?,” Aung Zaw, editor of the Thai-based Irrawaddy magazine, wrote in a commentary for the Bangkok Post.

In Washington, US President George W. Bush renewed broad sanctions against the military regime, saying its repression of the opposition threatened US interests.

The United States has been a fierce critic of Myanmar’s human rights record and tightened sanctions against the junta after Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in May 2003. She remains under house arrest at her home in Yangon.

The State Department, in its latest travel advisory for Myanmar, has warned US citizens to exercise extreme caution “in light of increasing incidents of bombings, and the possibility of additional attacks in the capital”.

The junta, which has ruled Myanmar in various forms since 1962, has often accused the United States and former colonial ruler Britain of meddling in its affairs.

From:
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_19-5-2005_pg4_21