Ohn Gyaw Then...

No, why should I be upset? He is expressing what he wants to do. He can see anyone. He can see the U.N. secretary-general. He can see the Pope.

Have you met Suu Kyi recently? She’s a leading politician in your country.

That’s what you think.

Have any senior members of your government met her recently for a dialogue?

No. You know very well she made it a condition that without her there can be no meeting, that [her party’s] chairman Aung Shwe cannot see Gen. Khin Nyunt.

Does that mean you would be happy to have a meeting with lower-level officials from her party?

There is a saying in China: the o­ne who ties the knot will have to untie it.

So the first move for dialogue should come from them?

Whatever your conclusion is.

Surely this inflexible attitute by both sides is not in the interest of Myanmar.

We are responsible for the whole country. When we do something, we want to be perfect and disciplined because our contemporary past has been chaotic. We do not want to plunge ourselves into another chaotic situation.

When we met in December, you said things could not go o­n as they had done, that you had to change. But since then not much has changed in Myanmar.

What do you mean by change? It’s a process that we are doing. The democratic system and the constitutional process are going o­n. Inch by inch we are making progress. We are building more roads, providing more security to the people. We have our economic plans. Now we are concentrating o­n producing more rice and other agricultural crops. And at the same time, o­n the political front, the constitutional process is going o­n, [with] meetings of the convening committee every alternate week, I think.

When is the new constitution going to be finished and elections held? Even Malaysia and Indonesia, who strongly pushed for your membership in Asean, are unhappy that little progress has been made.

If this is what they would like to express, they can do so. But this is a very important factor we are discussing. It is the internal affairs of a country. Not o­nly a country in the region, but also a country which belongs to the same association. It’s just like in a boat — if there is some commotion in the boat, the boat will capsize.