Good Strategy Needed To Help Myanmar: Nobel Prize Laureate

By Zakaria Abdul Wahab

SINGAPORE, June 4 (Bernama) — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari said Thursday the international community should have a well-thought and clear strategy to follow before going to Myanmar to help the country and its people.

Addressing the first Asian Mediation Conference here, the former Finnish president said many parties had taken a different perspective or approach in handling the many issues affecting the life and well-being of the people and the junta-ruled Myanmar.

He said the international community took a keen interest in Myanmar following a spate of incidents such as the suppression of the Saffron Revolution by the government, the devastating effects of Cyclone Nargis, the exodus of the Rohingya people and the famine in the Chin state.

He said the sympathy towards the people of Myanmar together with a principled conviction that they had the right to a state that could be an instrument for their well-being were the two driving forces of the international communities’ action relating to Myanmar.

Ahtisaari, noted for his international peace work in mediating conflicts in Kosovo, Nambia, Aceh and Iraq, outlined four strategic cornerstones that could help Myanmar get over with the long sufferings of its people and improve its government.

Firstly, he said there was a need to have dialogue with all relevant forces including the military government, regardless of whether these forces were legitimate or not.

The dialogue was important but it should not be seen as a reward for good behaviour but as an unconditional requirement to achieve positive developments, he added.

The former president said many countries found cooperation with undemocratic regimes difficult as these regimes, they argued, did not really represent the nation and its people.

He also said that the international community should be willing to endorse and support dialogue between the government and the groups that had so far remained outside the constitutional process, regardless of whose initiative such dialogue was.

The international parties should not talk only to the government and other relevant parties but they should help reconciliation between relevant political forces, the government and the opposition, including the ethno-national groups, he said.

“The focus of our attention should not be on “who does”, but on “what is being done”, he said, adding that to alleviate the suffering of the Myanmar people they should actively identify opportunities that each of the transition processes entailed instead of just focusing on whether a certain transition process was legitimate or not.

Ahtisaari said that in addition to supporting processes outside the government’s constitutional framework, supporting progressive developments inside the government’s constitutional setting was also needed.

“This would not constitute supporting or endorsing all the aspects of the government constitutions but just some,” he said.

He said a study by the Crisis Management Initiative for the European Commission on the constitutional quarrels in Myanmar had discovered that many of concerns of the opposition about the constitution were related to the implementation of the constitution rather than the text of the constitution.

Finally and most importantly, Ahtisaari said, addressing the needs of the Myanmar people required effective poverty alleviation and concrete strategies for economic and human development.

“The well-being of the people is a precondition for a longer-term peace and security,” he said.

When asked whether any party had approached him to seek his help in mediating the tussle on human rights between pro-democracy opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the Myanmar government, Ahtisaari said he supported the United Nations’ current efforts led by its special envoy Ibrahim Gambari in handling the matter.

Source: BERNAMA