UN chief walked tightrope with junta
BANGKOK - No mention of Burma's detained prodemocracy leader. No talk of holding a controversial vote despite a catastrophic cyclone. Not a word about the military regime's history of human rights abuses.
Those were the issues UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon avoided in talks with Burma's junta leader. It appeared to pay off with dozens of visas issued for UN relief workers - but at the high cost, say critics, of ignoring Burma's latest crackdown on dissent.
"What everyone recognized was that the scale of this disaster was so enormous that all efforts had to be focused on the emergency relief effort," Richard Horsey, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian effort, said yesterday.
With so many lives at stake, he said there was no room for politics to be discussed at this time.
Ban's main mission was to ease access for hundreds of foreign aid workers who had been restricted from entering cyclone-affected areas.
He also oversaw a conference that raised up to $150 million in emergency relief funds.
Critics call the rare sit-down last week with Burma's reclusive leader, Senior General Than Shwe, a missed opportunity because it avoided prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's continued house arrest and a referendum vote on a constitution some say will only perpetuate the military's grip on power.
"I think it's fair to say there was a conspiracy of silence about Suu Kyi, the referendum, and political reform," said Brad Adams, Asia director for US-based Human Rights Watch.
Ban took a calculated risk by avoiding talk about politics, but said he felt that was the only way to get results on the more pressing issue of helping the more than 2 million people left homeless by the May 2-3 cyclone.
"That is why I believe I was able to get agreement from Myanmar authorities," Ban told reporters yesterday. "Different circumstances, different situations, require different skills or approaches. In the case of talking with a certain . . . country or people who have been isolated a long time, then you need special care and sensitivity."
But Ban was also careful. He toured Burma for two days, then left before the second phase of voting on the constitutional referendum to avoid appearing to give it his implicit endorsement, UN officials said. After the polls closed, Ban flew back to Rangoon for the donors conference.
The regime has been criticized for going forward with the referendum while hundreds of thousands suffered from the cyclone, which left more than 134,000 people dead or missing.
But Ban also played along with the junta to a certain extent, when Burma authorities tried to save face by showing him a tidy aid distribution center and a postcard-perfect refugee camp. He asked to be flown farther south to tour areas harder hit by Cyclone Nargis, but let it drop after authorities demurred.
The only time Ban indirectly referred to Suu Kyi or the referendum was during a private meeting with Burma's prime minister. He told the leader that the country's rebuilding should also extend to democratic initiatives, according to UN officials.
Ban waited until after his return to New York, when Than Shwe extended her house arrest for a sixth straight year Tuesday, to comment on Suu Kyi. 