Annan Criticizes Road Map
covering burma and southeast asia
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Burma

Annan Criticizes Road Map


By KYAW ZWA MOE Wednesday, November 12, 2003


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UN Sec-Gen Kofi Annan criticized the Burmese junta’s proposed road map for political reconciliation in a report to the UN General Assembly on Monday. "The only way to ensure that the road map process is productive and credible, and proceeds in a stable and orderly fashion, is for it to involve all political parties, national leaders, ethnic nationalities and strata of society, from the beginning," he said. Opposition parties and ethnic groups inside and outside Burma have also expressed their strong disagreement with the plan forwarded by Burmese Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt. The United Nationalities Alliance (UNA), released a statement saying it did not accept the government’s road map soon after Gen Khin Nyunt outlined the plan on Aug 30. The Alliance is an umbrella group composed of eight organizations inside Burma which represent Karen, Chin, Mon, Kayah, Arakan and Shan people. The Committee for Representing the People’s Parliament (CRPP) also made an official announcement, saying that the junta’s road map did not represent the public. The CRPP was formed by the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party after after the ruling junta failed to respond to calls to recognize the results of the 1990 election. Cin Sian Thang, a member of the CRPP, said in an interview with the BBC Burmese Service yesterday that the government was proceeding on its own and has not yet consulted with them. Cin Sian Thang is also chairman of the Zomi National Congress, a group belonging to the UNA. The first step in the seven-point road map proposed by the ruling generals is to reconvene the National Convention which is given the mandate to draft a constitution. The body convened first in 1993 but its work ceased in 1996, shortly after the NLD walked out of the proceedings. The UN human rights envoy to Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, said on Monday that the NLD would be allowed to take part in a the reconvened National Convention. Padoh Mahn Sha, general secretary of the Karen National Union, told the BBC that the National Convention was the junta’s attempt to destroy the results of the1990 election, which the NLD won by a landslide. He added that the junta’s road map lead to authoritarianism, not democracy. Kofi Annan said the junta needed to start a substantive dialogue with the NLD to show its commitment to the road map and was critical of the junta for not providing a timeline for Burma’s transition to democracy.

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