US pledges better ties for reform in Burma

US SECRETARY of state Hillary Clinton met Burmese president Thein Sein yesterday and said the US would reward the country’s leaders as long as reform kept “moving in the right direction” – but insisted that freeing political prisoners was a key condition.

“We believe that any political prisoner anywhere should be released. One political prisoner is one too many in our view,” Ms Clinton said after a visit to the Burmese capital Rangoon (Naypyidaw).

After leaving the capital, Ms Clinton was holding several meetings in the capital with Nobel Prize winner and civil rights activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was held in on-off political detention for years until her release in November.

Ms Suu Kyi confirmed yesterday she will run for parliament in upcoming elections, one of the tentative reform steps the new government has taken to loosen restrictions in the military-dominated country. “I will certainly run for the elections when they take place,” she said in a video broadcast.

Ms Clinton was also visiting the 2,500-year-old Shwedagon Pagoda Buddhist temple. Buddhist monks have been central dissenting voices in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar.

Ms Clinton is the highest ranking US official in half a century to visit Burma, which since 1962 has been run by a military junta that has shunned any links with the US. It is remarkable when passing through the city how little American influence there is.

According to Amnesty International data, Burma has released at least 318 political prisoners this year, and it reckons that more than 1,000 remain imprisoned. The government has also allowed greater press freedom and allowed limited public protests.

Taxi drivers and money changers are pleased at the prospect of reform translating into greater openness and a jolt for the tourism industry, and more broadly into the kind of investment that can lift the country into line with its southeast Asian Tiger neighbours such as Thailand.

“Things are changing, but the best thing is ‘slowly, slowly’,” urged a middle-aged man selling clothes in the shadow of the century-old Holy Trinity Cathedral.

Former general Thein Sein became president in March after an election that most described as unfair. However, since the November poll, Mr Thein has taken some steps that have prompted optimism, including allowing Ms Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, to register for polls.

Ms Clinton also addressed the Burmese leadership over their links to other internationally marginalised countries such as North Korea. Her presence has been overshadowed by the arrival yesterday of the prime minister of Belarus, Mikhail Myasnikovich, and his wife, to whom two large welcome signs were erected at the airport and the road into the city. No such displays welcomed Ms Clinton.

Mr Myasnikovich made the front page of yesterday's edition of the government-run New Light of Myanmarnewspaper, complete with a detailed resumé of his illustrious career, while the secretary of state's visit was mentioned in a perfunctory two-paragraph story on page two.