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DANANG, Vietnam: Myanmar's foreign minister has told Southeast Asian counterparts that promised elections would be held this year and would be fair, the ASEAN secretary general said on Thursday.
Surin Pitsuwan said the military-ruled state's Foreign Minister Nyan Win made the comments at a dinner on Wednesday in Vietnam with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
"That was done last night and it was assured that it will be this year, and it will be free, fair and credible," Surin told reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting.
"No date has been set, but everything is moving on course. That's what we were told."
Marty Natalegawa, foreign minister of ASEAN's largest member Indonesia, said, "We've also been told that the preparations are well under way."
Surin said the ASEAN ministers "have expressed their high hope that the issue of Myanmar will be resolved this year and that we can move on to the new era of ASEAN relations and cooperation with the international community."
"How the election is conducted, how it is perceived, will help a great deal in shaping (the) international community's perception about our region," Natalegawa told reporters.
But he added that ASEAN will not be "held hostage" by the issue.
The United States and the 10-member ASEAN bloc agreed in November that Myanmar's scheduled 2010 elections must be "free, fair, inclusive and transparent" to be credible.
The call came after US President Barack Obama and Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein took part in the first-ever ASEAN-US summit in, a reversal of a longstanding US policy of shunning the Myanmar regime.
Critics of the junta are demanding that detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, be allowed to take part in the ballot.
Last week the United States voiced doubts whether elections in Myanmar would be credible and urged the junta to engage the opposition and ethnic minorities.
The election would be the first since 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi's party won the last ballot by a landslide but was never permitted to take office.
Reclusive junta leader Than Shwe last week urged citizens to make "correct choices" at the polls. The regime has so far failed to set a date or issue election laws despite promising to hold the polls this year. - AFP/de
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