By Panu Wongcha-um
BANGKOK, July 12 (Reuters) – The Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN was told on Sunday by Myanmar’s foreign minister that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi was “a sister” who was in good health and would be looked after, ASEAN’s special envoy to Myanmar said.
Maria Theresa Lazaro, the Philippine foreign minister, has been pressing for access to 81-year-old Suu Kyi, who has been held since her elected government was ousted in a 2021 military coup that plunged the country into conflict.
“My recollection of the statement of the Myanmar foreign minister on Aung San Suu Kyi is that she’s in good health and that the premise of how he said this is that ‘she is a relative, she’s a sister and therefore we will take care of her’,” Lazaro told a press conference.
Top diplomats of the 11-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations met in person with their Myanmar counterpart on Sunday for the first time since the coup, in an effort to kick-start a peace initiative that has failed to halt a civil war that has killed an estimated 100,000 people.
Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence, recently commuted by one-third, on a multitude of criminal charges that her allies say were fabricated to keep her out of politics. Suu Kyi has denied wrongdoing and her exact whereabouts are unknown.
‘ENGAGEMENTS ARE VERY IMPORTANT’
Myanmar’s leadership has been banned from top-level ASEAN meetings over their failure to implement a “five-point consensus” peace plan agreed with the bloc, which has made barely any progress.
Lazaro defended the decision to call a meeting with Myanmar Foreign Minister Tin Maung Swe and said the bloc was already seeing movement on humanitarian access.
“It can’t be done in one stroke,” she said. “It’s evolving and I think all of these engagements are very important.”
The ASEAN peace initiative was placed in further doubt last week when Myanmar’s pro-military parliament passed a motion calling it interference by ASEAN and urging the new civilian-led, army-backed government to reject it.
Lazaro stood by the plan, calling it a framework for engagement to initiate dialogue between warring groups and improve relief efforts.
“They reject it or not, I stand pat and I think ASEAN stands behind the five-point consensus,” she said.
Thailand’s Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said his counterparts “clearly spelled out our expectations” of progress to Myanmar’s Tin Maung Swe, and called for access to Suu Kyi “so that we can be able to verify the claims” that she was in good health.
Myanmar’s foreign ministry in a statement said Sunday’s meeting discussed enhancing relations and “constructive cooperation for the restoration of Myanmar’s full and equal participation in ASEAN.”
A statement by 20 political and ethnic minority groups in Myanmar released on Sunday expressed concern about ASEAN meeting with the foreign minister of a country that was rejecting its peace initiative, and said the bloc was not engaging sufficiently with other stakeholders.
“It is therefore difficult to reconcile the expansion of high-level engagement with a party that has openly repudiated ASEAN’s own framework,” it said.
(Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um; Writing by Martin Petty. Editing by Mark Potter)
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