Open Letter from Mary Robinson and John Ruggie to EU Foreign Ministers and EU High Representative

19 April 2012

On behalf of the Institute for Human Rights and Business, we are writing to urge you and your fellow European Foreign Ministers to make clear that respect for international human rights standards is integral to future trade with and investment in Myanmar.

For a start, that means adhering to relevant international standards such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which were unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011 and strongly supported by the European Union throughout the process of their development and adoption.

Upcoming European Union discussions on easing economic sanctions in response to the dramatic changes in the country following recent elections are indeed vitally important to the country’s hopeful steps towards reform, democracy and sustainable economic development.

As you know, new investors will likely face many complex challenges when sanctions policies are eased. For example, an unstable security situation requires well-trained security forces that comply with international standards. Another major risk is uncertainty around land acquisition and use. There is an urgent need for processes to ensure that the rights of customary and legal owners and users of land are respected. When land is acquired, every effort must be made not to forcibly evict inhabitants and before relocation or acquisition to ensure full consultation and prompt and adequate compensation. Companies should conduct due diligence to avoid involvement with business partners that pose serious legal risks, or have charges against them.

Moreover, it is essential to take into account the poorly regulated labour environment, and the importance of recognising the rights of free peaceful assembly, free association, and collective bargaining; the need for a strengthened domestic business sector, and to avoid corrupt practices in business operations. Finally, it is imperative to ensure that new investment does not perpetuate existing inequities, but instead provides equal opportunity for all.

The Government of Myanmar has the obligation to regulate new and existing foreign investment in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. Its actions over the coming months and years will be key in avoiding the "resource curse" faced by many countries blessed with abundant natural resources because poor governance of revenues can have adverse impact on state finances, limiting and restricting the state’s ability to protect human rights. For their part, foreign investors will have to proceed in a more accountable and transparent manner as well.

The opportunity for a new democratic beginning in Myanmar requires responsible actions on the part of all stakeholders. As EU Foreign Ministers discuss conditions for lifting sanctions and EU Member States’ responses to greater openness in Myanmar, the Institute for Human Rights and Business urges the European Union to use its powers, and those of its Member States, to adopt an explicit requirement for companies investing in Myanmar to adhere to international standards and operate in ways that support, rather than undermine respect for human rights.

This would include coherent actions pursuant to trade and investment policies, development assistance, lending, and export credit among others. The European Investment Bank should be encouraged to take a leadership role amongst multilateral development banks in ensuring that any projects financed in Myanmar involving the private sector include explicit human rights requirements. Businesses planning to invest should conduct initial human rights impact assessments and on-going due diligence in line with the UN Guiding Principles, consulting with local and international civil society, academia, officials, and independent experts.

The growing momentum to promote investment in Myanmar must be matched by commitments from states to fulfill their international legal obligations and from corporations to meet their responsibility to respect human rights.

Yours sincerely,

Mary Robinson, Patron

Institute for Human Rights and Business

Former President of Ireland &

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights  

John Ruggie, Chair

Institute for Human Rights and Business

Former UN Special Representative on

Business and Human Rights

Links : http://www.ihrb.org/news/2012/open-letter-from-mary-robinson-and-john-ruggie-to-eu-foreign-ministers-and-eu-high-representative.html

Lift sanctions that infringe on human rights

Thursday, 05 April 2012 14:36 Derek Tonkin 

(Commentary) – The very positive welcome from Asian and Western leaders to the orderly conduct of the recent by-elections in Burma has encouraged discussion on how best the West should respond to this further indication of political reform in the country.

To date, no Western government has felt able to ease a single economic or financial sanction against Burma, despite the widely recognized progress which has been made since the civilian government took power in March 2011 and despite all the formal promises over the years that there would be a positive response to reform.

No doubt Western hesitancy has been strongly influenced by Aung San Suu Kyi's continued support for sanctions. A full year has passed, but apart from important gestures of goodwill such as visits by several Western foreign ministers, the only positive action by way of recognition has been to suspend the travel ban, but not the asset freeze, on the top 87 officials in the new government and their families. It is particularly unfortunate that the announced suspension of asset freezes for 24 of the 87 officials already removed from the travel ban in 2011 has now been rescinded unannounced.

The spotlight has now focused on those elements in the confusing array of Western sanctions that might be eased as a response, already long overdue, to the reforms that have already taken place.

Network Myanmar advocates a simple solution to this dilemma, which is to rescind at once all those sanctions that have human rights implications.

Whatever the original intention, there are many sanctions which primarily and some exclusively affect the population. The worst offenders are the United States, whose sanctions regime, in four Congressional Acts and five Presidential Executive Orders, never pretended to be "smart," but were designed to maximize the damage to the Burmese economy in the promotion of regime change and included general bans on trade and investment, restrictive mandates for U.N. agencies and the blocking of development assistance from international financial institutions. Canada is proud that it has the toughest sanctions in the West, but overlooks the human rights implications of its actions.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Tomás Ojea Quintana has already stressed the importance of a detailed analysis of Western sanctions to ascertain the extent to which they infringe human rights.

E.U. sanctions too have human rights implications. For example, the sectorial ban on the import of timber and timber products has hit furniture manufacturers hard. As a result many carpenters and furniture-makers have been compelled to seek employment in neighbouring Thailand, where they may well find themselves working on imported Burmese timber and suffering exploitation. The E.U. should not be complicit in human rights abuses. EU sanctions do of course list the names of hundreds of targeted individuals and companies, but they are almost entirely persons and entities that have never had a trading relationship with Europe, have never used Western banking facilities and have never held assets in the E.U.

U.S., Canadian and E.U. sanctions are the very antithesis of modern sanctions philosophy and practice, which strongly reject generalized sanctions precisely because of their human rights implications.

As regards the E.U., there is considerable variation in practice with respect to trade, investment and tourism not subject to statutory controls. The UK continues to discourage such engagement, intervening at its discretion to dissuade UK companies publicly from involvement. Other E.U. countries however are already organizing trade missions to Burma, or providing official support. There is clearly a very important need for the E.U. to harmonize their policy in this context as a matter of urgency. Norway, not a member of the E.U., has already set the pace by announcing that it now positively encourages trade, investment and tourism, though it will continue to respect E.U. statutory restrictions.

No doubt in the light of her victory in the by-elections Aung San Suu Kyi is reconsidering her support for sanctions, though the NLD has never acknowledged the damage which they cause to the economy generally. The West should be guided in its decisions primarily by the reality on the ground.

Now that a government is in power that has set poverty eradication, rural development and social welfare as important priorities, there can be no excuse for Western governments seeking to compel further reform through the use of sanctions targeting the population. These sanctions should not be part of the Western arsenal of restrictive measures."

– Network Myanmar is a charitable association that supports informed policies that promotes political rights and liberties for the people of Burma.

LINK : http://www.mizzima.com/edop/commentary/6908-lift-sanctions-that-infringe-on-human-rights.html

Burma sanctions: to keep, or not to keep?

By Francis Wade Apr 05, 2012 2:04PM UTC

Following last week’s resounding by-election win for Burma’s opposition, the expected re-engineering of international policy towards the country is already underway.  The US has announced it will soon appoint an ambassador and relax sanctions (a presidential waiver on ‘national security grounds’ meant the decision did not need Congressional backing), while the EU looks set to follow suit with a further relaxation of it’s already porous sanctions regime.

The predictability of the moves belies their controversy. The standard narrative accompanying the by-elections result, in which the opposition National League for Democracy appears to have won 43 out of the 45 seats up for grabs, is one of jubilation – Hillary Clinton says Washington will “embrace the progress,” while British FM William Hague speaks of “a very important moment of change”.

Judging by the scenes in Rangoon that accompanied the victory, that feeling is shared by many inside Burma. But some are still cautious: “Several Burmese officials have told me that by allowing the NLD to win a few seats—while ensuring that the military’s favored party still controls parliament—the government is betting that it has done just enough to normalize relations with the West, get aid and investment, and still remain essentially in control,” writes journalist Joshua Kurlantzick.

Its ‘normalisation’ programme (variously described as ‘reform’ or ‘transition’) has been hugely successful, as the mooted policy changes show. Whether the thaw in relations really reflects the facts on the ground however is becoming a topic of fiery debate – Human Rights Watch says: “The political opposition may have a monopoly on legitimacy in Burma, but the military still has something close to a monopoly on power – it runs the key ministries, does not answer to parliament or the courts, and can veto constitutional changes.”

Suu Kyi’s entrance to this arena no doubt confers legitimacy on it – she is fully aware of that – but her supporters see her role as one of pulling the MPs unsure of which direction to head in (towards President Thein Sein’s so-called ‘moderate’ faction, or the hawks loyal to the old guard) towards the light. She may well be able to influence this to an extent, but the task of getting enough people on side to drive real change – overhauling the judicial system and constitution, and reworking economic priorities so that more money goes to health and education, and less to the military – will take years, and more than just a majority in agreement, to achieve.

In that sense it does appear too early to drop sanctions (if it is a desire for trade with the west that has largely fuelled the reform, as is likely, then one can consider sanctions something of a success story). Military-owned companies, such as the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings, still profit hugely from sales of gas (which will increase as sanctions loosen), while as yet there is no movement towards overhauling land ownership laws that grant the government complete control of (and which thus profits from) farmland, to the huge detriment of the 70 percent of Burma’s population that relies on agriculture as a primary source of income.

While more money should be channeled to some sectors, particularly aid (which, contrary to popular belief, has not been limited as a means to punish of the regime, but rather because the generals exercised complete control over the disbursement of assistance, and unsurprisingly pocketed much of it), the loosening of restrictions on investment before rules are enacted that would enable business to spur human development is ill-advised.

An election victory can rightly be considered a step in the right direction if it is followed by results that go beyond offering a cosmetic lift for Burma. Only time will tell, but the valuable prudence of western countries that for years helped to maintain pressure on the regime appears to be vanishing (a result of both the perceived changes here, and a reinvigorated push by the US and EU to tap markets in Southeast Asia), and long before its time.

Letting Burma Back In

BY TOM MALINOWSKI

Experts debate whether the role of sanctions was successful in opening up Burma. But with the up-coming by-elections and the release of political prisoners, the greater challenge may be how to lift them.

An hour after landing in Burma this January, I sat on the floor of a tiny bamboo house in a suburb of Rangoon, sharing lunch with a half dozen women who had just walked out of prison following an amnesty of political prisoners.  There was much I wanted to ask them:  about their treatment (it got better over time, thanks, they all insisted, to international pressure), about their plans (get a good night's sleep, and then right back to political work), and their fears (chiefly, that with dissidents streaming out of prisons and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi heading into parliament, the West would declare Burma a success and move on).  But there was one question to which I kept coming back:  "Why are you free?"

I posed a variation of that question to everyone I met in Burma -- dissidents, government officials, journalists and academics.  Why is the Burmese government promising now rights and freedoms that, for decades, it sent people to prison for demanding?  Why is it so eager now to draw Aung San Suu Kyi into the country's political life, after so many years of trying to blot her out?  Not everyone agreed on the precise reasons.  But there was a common theme to their answers:  After years of serving a military that was shunned, hated, or ridiculed for running Burma into the ground, "they" -- Burma's president, Thein Sein, and those behind him -- want "legitimacy and respect."  They want to be on better terms with their people, and for Burma to be on better terms with the world.

It is plain that the Burmese people deserve most of the credit for their rulers' change of heart.  For years, they faced unrelenting brutality from above, yet sustained a political movement dedicated to non-violence and national reconciliation. Time and again, they organized themselves in sophisticated and principled ways, not just to demand political freedom, but to respond to natural disasters, to deliver to themselves the basic services their government neglected, and to remain connected to the outside world.  In Aung San Suu Kyi, they also had something that dissident movements in most dictatorships lack -- a leader clearly capable of unifying their country and leading its government.  The military may have held all the power in Burma.  But she and her movement held all the legitimacy.

Even in the years when Burma's democracy movement seemed silenced and defeated, pressure from below manifested itself in conversations in marketplaces and monasteries, in acts of passive resistance, in the flight of talented people from the country.  Then, every so often, it would burst into the open, as it did in the 2007 Saffron Revolution.  With brute force, the military survived that challenge (a reminder that the road to change in Burma has been far from peaceful).  But many Burmese believe that some army officers felt shame about the violence they inflicted on the revered Buddhist monks who led that uprising, and about their government's deadly incompetence the following year when a cyclone ravaged the country.  When Burma's long-serving dictator Than Shwe retired in 2010, the generation of officers that succeeded him undoubtedly included some men affected by Burma's traumas who wanted a way out of the morass it was in.

The more controversial question is whether pressure from outside, including Western sanctions, also contributed to these changes.  I've hesitated to weigh in strongly on this debate, partly because it is hard to set aside one's own bias (those, like me, who supported sanctions naturally want to believe that they helped -- and vice versa), and partly because it's premature to argue about what caused Burma's transition to democracy when that transition is not remotely complete.  Perhaps in twenty years, when archives are studied and the key players have told their stories, a consensus will emerge.  And then someone will come along to disprove it.

At the same time, I have found it disconcerting to hear diplomats and other observers assert with certainty that sanctions had nothing to do with Burma's political opening.  After all, the United States and other countries imposed sanctions to promote a particular objective in Burma, and now that objective seems on the verge of being achieved.  It's as if we had turned a hose on a raging fire and, after seeing the flames subside, said:  "How did that happen?  It couldn't have been the water we sprayed."  In neither case does correlation prove causality - a sanctioned state can change course for reasons unrelated to sanctions, just as a doused fire can burn out on its own.  But it is strange not to consider that one's efforts had their intended effect.

One reason why the Burma sanctions are often discounted is that many officials who imposed them over the years themselves lacked faith in the strategy they were pursuing.  Bill Clinton and George W. Bush pushed through sanctions mostly to express solidarity with Aung San Suu Kyi; others in the U.S. government saw them as a symbolic expression of America's disgust with the Burmese junta, or simply as a way of appeasing Congressional and public concerns on an issue that was not strategically important.  Few of them actually expected that sanctions might work!

But some advocates of sanctions had a more reasoned theory of the case.

First, they believed that Western sanctions would create at least some objective difficulties for the Burmese government.  The generals might not care at first about sanctions' impact on Burma's economy as a whole (which was always harmed more by their own mismanagement), and they might compensate for any harm to their personal finances by doing business with China.  But the argument that sanctions would drive Burma into the arms of the Chinese turned out to be an argument for sanctions, not against them, since that was not a place where Burma's nationalistic military leaders wanted to be for long.

Second, sanctions proponents expected that eventually, Burma's leaders would want to develop their country's economy and to improve their standing in the world.  To achieve those goals, they would need access to the very things that sanctions had denied them:  Western investment, markets and banks, and better relations with the United States.  At that point, as I argued in testimony to the Congress in 2004, the U.S. would say to the Burmese government:  "You cannot make a separate peace with us.  Reach a compromise with your opposition first." The idea was that sanctions would give the U.S. negotiating leverage, which it could transfer to Aung San Suu Kyi and the democratic opposition.  The government would need their support to win relief from international pressure, and to get their support it would have to satisfy some of their basic demands, including the release of political prisoners, and ultimately to bring them into the political system.

Of course, no one had a clue when any of this might happen.  After Burma's deeply flawed 2010 elections, I thought sanctions would likely have to be tightened further to produce the desired effect; I was wrongly dismissive of those who argued that a new generation of military officers with a new outlook might already be coming to the fore.  Exactly how and why that happened will be for historians to answer.  But once it did, the Obama administration reached out to them, and Burma's leaders acted as we had long hoped:  they started talks with Aung San Suu Kyi, and engineered new elections designed to bring the democratic opposition into parliament.  And they acknowledged that they were doing this in part because it was necessary to improve relations with the outside world, and to get sanctions lifted.

Everyone I spoke to in Burma, whether they had supported or opposed sanctions in the past, assumed that the reformist president Thein Sein was using the promise of relief from sanctions in his arguments with hard liners in the government.  All argued that the international community must now find ways of rewarding Thein Sein to help him win those arguments.  And they acknowledged that Western countries only have carrots to offer today because of the sticks they employed in the past -- every diplomatic and economic sanction they imposed created a card they can play now, as serious political negotiations finally get underway in Burma.

Burma's April 1st parliamentary by-elections are the next important milestone in that process, and should, if they go well, trigger additional rewards from the West.  But the elections are not the next big test of reform.  Both Burma's opposition and its president want Aung San Suu Kyi to win a seat -- they need her to champion their cause in the government, and he needs her to legitimize that government.  And if her party wins, it will control only a tiny fraction of seats in the current parliament.

As remarkable as the changes in Burma have been -- with some political prisoners walking free, and real debate breaking out from the front pages of the country's newspapers to the hearing rooms of its parliament -- the big tests lie ahead.  Laws that criminalize dissent are still on the books.  Burma's military continues to commit war crimes against ethnic minority populations on the country's frontiers, and still does not answer to its president, parliament or judiciary.   Burma's Constitution gives the military unchecked authority over all matters of internal security, the power to veto constitutional changes and even to dismiss the president.

The elections that really matter in Burma will not come until 2015, when most of the parliament will be up for election.  If that vote is free and fair, the opposition will be in a strong position to win.  Hundreds of former military officers who now serve as members of the pro-government party would then be swept aside.  And Aung San Suu Kyi would be able to form a government of her own.   It is far from clear yet if the military will allow that.  This means that Western countries need to walk a fine line:  rewarding the changes that have already taken place, but conserving some leverage, through 2015, to secure the harder changes hopefully still to come.

Another reason to move gradually is that absent deeper political and economic reform, lifting all sanctions might not even help Burma's economy, much less its hopes for democracy.  If all restrictions on doing business with Burma were removed, for example, much of the money would likely flow to military-owned companies or conglomerates run by the rising class of oligarchs linked to the military, that control Burma's most lucrative export industries, such as natural gas, timber and gems.  This kind of investment would only reinforce the military's failed development strategy of pulling natural resources out of the ground, converting them into cash, and storing that cash in off shore, off budget accounts for the benefit of the elite.  Indeed, one of the salutary effects sanctions may have had during the years of dictatorship in Burma was to slow down, even if slightly, the process by which its natural wealth was plundered, laundered overseas, or put to uses (such as weapons purchases) that did nothing for its people.

A smarter way to lift sanctions, assuming political progress continues, would be to relax them first on those sectors of Burma's economy from which ordinary people are more likely to benefit (such as agriculture and manufacturing), while maintaining them for some time longer on those sectors from which only the military benefits.

Above all, we should set our sights high when we think of Burma's future.  A few years ago, when soldiers were gunning down monks and students on the streets of Rangoon, many people might have been satisfied to see Burma evolve into a country as "free" as Vietnam or Cambodia.  But Burma may now have leaders, in government and opposition, with the vision to take it so much further, if only they can overcome the resistance of those who still have a stake in the status quo.  Western countries can help, if they ease sanctions more strategically, and less reflexively, than they put them into place.

Tom Malinowski is the Washington director of Human Rights Watch

Myanmar presidential economist ‘frustrated’ with Western sanctions

Author: Lucy McNulty | Published: 5 Apr 2012

Myanmar’s presidential economists have branded the US government’s plans to instigate a targeted easing of sanctions as “frustrating” and called for more international assistance with regulatory reform.

The US today announced it was ready to ease some sanctions in the Southeast Asian country, such as a ban on US companies investing in or offering financial services to the country, in recognition of its burgeoning democratic transition.

But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed any relaxation of sanctions would begin cautiously, as Myanmar still had a long way to go to shake off years of military rule. Ear

The announcement comes as the EU, Japan and Australia revealed similar plans to ease sanctions and restrictions on doing business in Myanmar following successful by-elections in the country last week. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won 40 of the 45 seats at stake.

Myanmar presidential economic adviser Set Aung told IFLR this morning that the sanctions currently in place had created a monopoly environment which succeeded only in benefiting the government cronies they were intended to hinder, and harming the ordinary business man in Myanmar.

“Western governments always talk about the good of the people, but they never do anything beneficial for the people,” he said. “They need to better understand that if this country’s democratic transition is going to work, it has to link to sustainable economic development which directly benefits the people.”

“Simply shifting the goal posts by relaxing periphery sanctions but holding on to those that really matter like trade restrictions will not help achieve that,” he said. “It is really frustrating and not helping the people.”

He added that the country was “desperate” for international assistance with its regulatory reform agenda.

“Most ministers are working in areas which they don’t know much about and are therefore desperate for international consultation,” he said.

“Our focus is on equitable, inclusive and sustainable development across the economic, social and environmental spectrum, but we can’t do everything; we are struggling with the reform process at the moment,” he said.

The Ministry of Finance and Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development were most in need of assistance, he said, given the number of reforms both departments had undertaken.

He added that some Asian consultancies were currently charging $1750 per day to assist with legislative reform but this was expensive and not enough alone.

“The people of Myanmar are complaining reforms are not happening fast enough, while international governments are saying we need to slow down,” he said.

“But if our transition to democracy is going to work we need to work quickly to narrow the gap between urban and rural development,” he said.

Earlier in the week, a Bank of America report warned of over-enthusiasm and great uncertainty in the opening up of Myanmar.

One British diplomat based in Myanmar said today he expected almost all European sanctions, excluding the arms embargo, to be lifted when the EU foreign ministers meet to discuss its policy on the country on April 23.

The British embassy was likely to begin encouraging socially responsible investment into the country around the same time, he said. It was also likely to begin to play a very close role in assisting Myanmar authorities with regulatory reform once sanctions were lifted, he said. The country’s outdated Companies Act was particularly in need of revision, he said.

“The President is keen to encourage British businesses to come in,” he said. “He thinks a lot can be learnt from western companies in terms of setting business standards, such as employee treatment, environmental awareness and so on.”

But he warned the arbitrary rule of law in operation in the country meant business activity in the region was still a risk.

Set Aung said Myanmar wanted sustainable not irresponsible or unethical investment. “Early birds are going to catch more worms,” he said.


LINK : http://www.iflr.com/Article/3007914/Regulatory/Myanmar-presidential-economist-frustrated-with-Western-sanctions.html

The ‘Virtuous Circle’ of Carrot & Stick Sanctions

Have economic sanctions against Burma passed their sell-by date, or do they remain a key element in prodding the Burmese government down the road of reform?

Opinion is as divided among many leading Burma watchers as it is among the Western politicians who must ultimately decide on the fate of the sanctions, with some arguing for an immediate end and others believing the restrictions must remain in place until more positive and permanent reform happens.

A third line of opinion is that the sanctions could be gradually withdrawn bit by bit if reforms continue.

One of the most high-profile voices urging a rapid end to the sanctions, American economist and Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, has described them as an “impediment” to Burma’s emergence from decades of isolation.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz has described sanctions as an “impediment” to Burma’s emergence from decades of isolation.

Stiglitz praises what he sees as “unprecedented transparency” in recent financial decision making coupled with an easing of restrictions in key areas.

That’s not the view of more than 60 members of the British Parliament who, while praising the Thein Sein initiatives, argue that no reforms have yet been enshrined in law. They are seeking to commit the British government to block any attempt by the European Union to ease the sanctions after Burma’s April 1 elections.

A parliamentary motion to that end signed by British legislators from across the political spectrum “notes with concern that hundreds of political prisoners remain in Burma's jails, and that there has been an increase in human rights abuses in ethnic states.”

The 62 legislators who have so far signed the motion said: “International pressure has played an important role in encouraging reforms so far, and [we call] on the government to ensure that EU sanctions on Burma are not relaxed prematurely before substantially more political prisoners are released, conflict is ended and there is an inclusive dialogue process to secure further and irreversible reform.”

The editor of the Burma Economics Watch, Sean Turnell, is in favor of the carrot-and-stick approach— reducing sanctions gradually in return for more reform. The primary purpose of the sanctions imposed by the United States, the EU, Australia, New Zealand and Canada was to induce change, argues the economist from Australia’s Macquarie University.

“This I think they have done, primarily by creating incentives for all but the most rusted-on supporters and ideologues of the old military regime to embrace change,” Turnell told The Irrawaddy this week after a visit to Burma to assess the effect of the Thein Sein reforms.

“Consistent with such purposes then, sanctions easing in response to meaningful reforms in Burma have always been the promise. Such reforms are as yet partial, as I suspect then are the likely modifications to the various sanctions regimes. Of importance at the moment is the direction of change and its momentum, in terms of reforms and, as a consequence of these, changes to sanctions.”

The US special envoy to Burma, Derek Mitchell, appears to be in the same camp as Turnell, and it’s his views which are most likely to influence White House thinking and calls for US Congress action to roll back the most draconian of sanctions.

Mitchell said the Washington government is looking at which sanctions might be getting in the way of reform, but he has warned that there is no one change in Burma that will magically lead to the lifting of all sanctions.

“The conditions for sanctions and other restrictions are more than these [April] elections,” he said after his latest visit to Burma. “There are specific issues that have to do with the release of all political prisoners, have to do with ethnic minority issues and have to do with other issues.

So, we are not looking for one particular event in order to say everything is normal, everything is right and is not reversible.”

Former British ambassador to Thailand and now chairman of the NGO Network Myanmar Derek Tonkin believes continued sanctions are “dumb”.

“Sanctions directed at the population at large have become a serious obstacle to the country's financial and economic reform programs, notably in rural development, poverty alleviation and social welfare,” he says on the Network Myanmar website this week.

“We should then have the honesty to recognize that it is the population at large which is being held to ransom by the Western pretense that their sanctions are ‘well-targeted’ when the overwhelming evidence is that almost all of them are not.”

In the same camp, Stiglitz argues: “It is clear that this moment in Myanmar’s history represents a real opportunity for permanent change. It is time for the world to move the agenda for Myanmar forward, not just by offering assistance but by removing the sanctions that have now become an impediment to the country’s transformation.”

Not so, says prominent Burmese exile Kyi May Kaung, a writer and analyst based in Washington.

“Countries that wish to see democracy and a free market in Burma should not lift sanctions too soon,” she wrote in an appeal for the Western world not to get carried away with what she says is the hype being generated by international media.

“Reporters love to preface their interviews by feeding the interviewee ‘Now that there is change in Burma’—in fact, there has been no meaningful structural or institutional reform. I and a few other voices are the only ones remaining skeptical, we think with reason, and our voices are all but drowned out by the sounds of the big media wheel.”

Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has also urged caution, warning only days ago that media freedom in Burma was still being gagged by the authorities.

Turnell, who is in touch with a wide circle of opinion inside and outside Burma, thinks there is hope for what he terms a “virtuous circle of reform” in which sanctions can continue to play a part.

“One might also expect a narrowing and more specific targeting of measures, to ensure against unintended effects and to best encourage and hasten the reforms,” he told The Irrawaddy. “At the moment the ball is with Thein Sein. April 1 marks the next serve.”

Links :: http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=23291&page=2