ASEAN foreign ministers to push for tougher action on Myanmar

Myanmar will never be represented at an global gathering of foreign ministers in Cambodia this week, a spokesperson for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations  (ASEAN) seat said on Monday (Aug 1), after its military rulers declined a suggestion to send a non-junta representative instead.

The particular 10-country bloc  provides since late this past year barred the Myanmar junta from joining its meetings due to its lack of progress within implementing an ASEAN peace plan the generals agreed to after a coup in February 2021.

Malaysia is set to prospect a push just for tougher action on Myanmar when the regional bloc of international ministers meet recently, as anger mounts at the junta with regard to stonewalling crisis resolution efforts.

ASEAN – which has spearheaded so far fruitless diplomatic efforts to restore peacefulness – last week condemned the particular junta’s execution of four prisoners.

Myanmar has been around chaos since a putsch in Feb last year and the loss of life toll from the military’s brutal crackdown upon dissent has handed 2, 100, according to a local monitoring team.

Ministers meeting in Phnom Penh from Wednesday are expected to lament the lack of progress on ASEAN’s “five-point consensus” plan, agreed to in 04 last year, which required an immediate end in order to violence and conversation between the junta and coup opponents.

As well as voicing “deep concern” about current developments and phoning for restraint, the ministers will also demand “concrete actions to effectively and completely implement the five-point consensus”, according to the draught communique obtained by AFP.

After more than a season of no improvement on the plan, Malaysia will present a framework for its implementation, even while critics deride the particular ASEAN as a toothless talking shop.

“The key element from the framework is there must be an end-game. You have to have an end-game. What is the end-game of the five-point consensus? ” Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah told AFP.