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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has called on Myanmar to facilitate visits by its new special envoy to help defuse its political conflict, according to a statement released after a meeting of the group’s foreign ministers earlier in the week.
The statement issued late Friday by the Cambodian chair of the meeting urged the military junta “to facilitate missions of the special envoy of the ASEAN chair, beginning with the first visit to Myanmar as soon as possible in order to move forward implementation of the five-point consensus.”
“In this regard, we recognized that in undertaking his duties, the special envoy could engage with all the parties concerned,” it added.
The Myanmar military, which toppled a democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup, has not made progress in implementing ASEAN’s so-called five-point consensus, which includes a call for an immediate end to violence and the dispatch of the group’s special envoy to meet with all stakeholders in the country.
ASEAN member states welcomed the endorsement of Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn as the special envoy, according to the statement. Sokhonn assumed the post as Cambodia took over the annually rotating chairmanship of the 10-member group from Brunei at the start of this year.
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The wording in the statement suggested a shift in the regional group’s approach in dealing with the crisis compared with last year, with less pressure on the junta to allow the special envoy to meet with all parties in the conflict.
Sokhonn said Thursday following the ministerial meeting in the Cambodian capital that he will travel to Myanmar in the second week of March without imposing preconditions on the junta to allow the envoy to meet all conflicting parties during the visit.
“Maybe it’s not possible to meet everyone for the first visit, and we should not be too ambitious,” he said.
The minister also said Cambodia has decided to take a different approach to overcome a deadlock between Myanmar and ASEAN over the insistence of some members last year that the group’s then Bruneian envoy should meet with all parties concerned including ousted and detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Compared with an earlier draft, a copy of which was seen by Kyodo News, the wording in the statement was watered down.
The previous version said the special envoy would not take sides or legitimize the positions of any parties “to enable him to operate in an inclusive and neutral manner” and “facilitate mediation of the dialogue process” among all groups.
Conference sources said the Myanmar junta had opposed the portion that was later removed, delaying the release of the statement.
However, ASEAN officials told Kyodo that there is fundamentally no change in the group’s position on the five-point peace plan agreed on by its leaders in April last year, with one saying, “We still insist on (the envoy meeting) all parties concerned.”
“However, the special envoy may do this differently and he may visit Myanmar first and engage with different parties rather than all parties all at once.”
During the foreign ministers’ meeting, several members did mention that the envoy should visit Suu Kyi and engage with pro-democracy forces, according to sources who attended.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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