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ASEAN mulls next steps for noncompliant Myanmar junta
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A worker adjusts an ASEAN flag at a meeting hall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Oct. 28, 2021 (Reuters/Lim Huey Teng)
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SEAN foreign ministers intend to meet in Jakarta next month ahead of another regional summit without Myanmar, after agreeing that there was insufficient progress by the junta to honor a consensus to achieve national reconciliation.
More than a year since the nine ASEAN leaders and junta chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing agreed to terms set out in the Five Point Consensus (5PC), the regime has defied its duties while overseeing a nationwide crackdown aimed at suppressing the millions of people opposed to military rule.
ASEAN is now mulling additional measures to impose on Myanmar, with Indonesia offering to host a meeting to hash out the details, its top diplomat has revealed.
On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, the United States, last week, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi took bilateral and multilateral meetings with her regional counterparts to discuss preparations for the next ASEAN summit in Cambodia.
At the informal ASEAN ministerial meeting, Retno pushed for the region’s leaders to specifically broach the topic of the 5PC implementation at the November summit, after it was made clear to everyone that the regime has no intention to honor the consensus. The other foreign ministers agreed to the suggestion.
“We have no ill intention. We only want to nudge [the junta and the opposition] to sit down, reconcile and talk about their future. This isn’t a form of interference, nor is it ASEAN prying into the domestic affairs of its member states. We’re only helping to sit them down to talk,” Retno told the press in New York on Thursday.
At a ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh in August, the regional bloc gave Myanmar’s military leadership until November to show some good faith before ASEAN’s leaders decide on additional measures.
