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SINGAPORE: Political prisoners in Myanmar and a Thai-Cambodia border crisis dominated talks between Southeast Asian foreign ministers Monday, pushing a bold new EU-style charter to the sidelines.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ministers sat down to the business end of their annual meeting expressing hope that Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi could soon be released from house arrest.
Asked whether Aung San Suu Kyi would be released in six months under a deadline set in Myanmar law, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said: "That's our hope."
None of the other ministers would comment as they entered the talks of the 10-nation bloc in Singapore.
The talks began with a dinner Sunday in the lush surroundings of the city-state's botanic gardens, where the ministers grappled with perennial troublemaker Myanmar and the armed standoff on the Thai-Cambodia border.
They expressed their "deep disappointment" over the recent extension by one year of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest and called for the release of all political prisoners in the military-ruled country.
The strong language stood in contrast to ASEAN ministers' usual practice of skirting controversy in the name of non-interference, and came as Myanmar prepared to announce its ratification Monday of the new ASEAN charter.
The ministers also called for "utmost restraint" between Thailand and Cambodia, which have deployed hundreds of heavily armed troops near the ruins of an 11th-century Buddhist temple in a disputed border area.
Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo said after Sunday's informal dinner that the neighbours had agreed to do their best to find a peaceful solution to the crisis which erupted last Tuesday.
"We urged both sides to exercise utmost restraint and resolve this issue amicably in the spirit of ASEAN solidarity and good neighbourliness," Yeo said in a statement.
Singapore chairs the bloc but is to hand over to Thailand this week.
The talks took place after Myanmar extended Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest for another year in May, and earned widespread criticism for its refusal to accept foreign aid workers in the immediate aftermath of a devastating cyclone.
Often criticised for failing to take on Myanmar's generals, the ministers "repeated the call by ASEAN leaders for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees…“ the statement said.
Yeo raised the prospect of the Nobel laureate's release, saying Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win reiterated that the junta is legally permitted to hold a citizen for a year, and a further five years with cabinet consent.
"He told me that the six-year limit will come up in about half a year's time," he told reporters.
Asked whether that meant she could be freed, he said: "I am just repeating to you what he told me and I think that is not an inaccurate inference."
The Nobel peace prize winner has spent most of the past 18 years confined to her lakeside home in Myanmar's main city Yangon after winning 1990 elections which the generals have never recognised.
Myanmar is expected Monday to become the seventh ASEAN member to ratify the group's new charter, which envisages an EU-style economic block committed to democracy and human rights by 2015.
Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines have yet to ratify the charter, with Manila saying previously that it will not do so until Myanmar releases political prisoners and improves its behaviour.
Efforts to get aid to about two million survivors of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar are also expected to feature prominently in Monday's talks, with the scheduled tabling of a joint ASEAN-UN-Myanmar disaster assessment.
ASEAN won praise for eventually bridging the gap between the junta and the outside world over cyclone relief. The May 2 storm left 138,000 dead or missing.
- AFP/yb
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