Tags : burma, jim webb
Sen. Webb Becomes First Senior U.S. Official To Meet Burma’s Junta Leader
Rangoon, Myanmar (AHN) – Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), chairman of the Senate East Asia and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, is in Myanmar “to advance U.S. interests,” becoming the first American lawmaker to visit the southeast Asian nation in a decade. His visit comes less than a week after opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted and sentenced for violating the terms of her house arrest, despite repeated calls by the international community for her release.
Webb will meet with Senior General Than Shwe and other Burmese leaders. He will be the first senior U.S. official to hold talks with Shwe, and the first member of Congress to visit the nation since Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 1999.
The 63-year-old senator and former Navy secretary is on a five-nation, two-week tour of Asia “to advance U.S. interests in the region,” his office said.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been governed by a military junta since 1962.
As head of the East Asia subcommittee, Webb oversees relations with nations in the region as well as organizations such as the ASEAN, which has urged Myanmar to free Suu Kyi and become “well respected in the international community.”
Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 13 of the last 19 years, was convicted on Tuesday and sentenced to 18 months of house arrest for letting an American visit her home in Yangon earlier this year.
The charge carried a maximum of five years in prison and her sentence had been commuted from three years.
A 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Suu Kyi is the head of the National League for Democracy, which became a government-in-exile when it won a majority of votes in the 1990 national elections. Her house arrest expired on May 27, but she continued to be detained because of her trial.
Her trial and detention at Insein Prison began on May 18, two weeks after an American named John William Yeattaw was caught swimming in Inya Lake with the aid of a water bottle. Yeattaw told authorities that he had arrived in Yangon on a tourist visa, and had secretly stayed in Suu Kyi’s compound for two days.
Her conviction and the commutation of her sentence has been met with hostility by European nations and human rights groups, who say Myanmar’s junta wants her detained during next year’s elections.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on the European Union and the United Nations to impose a global ban on the sale of arms to Burma.
U.S. President Barack Obama also made clear that Suu Kyi’s conviction and sentence “violate universal principles of human rights, run counter to Burma’s commitments under the ASEAN charter, and demonstrate continued disregard for UN Security Council statements.”
Webb’s visit to Burma is sanctioned by the State Department, which on Thursday said had given the senator a briefing before the trip and will “support him in any way necessary.”
Related posts:
