UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari met foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon on Monday to discuss the situation in neighbouring Myanmar.
NEW DELHI: UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari met foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon on Monday to discuss the situation in neighbouring Myanmar. Gambari is on a six-nation tour of Asia seeking support to persuade the military junta in Myanmar to return to the democratic mainstream.
With a 1,643km-long border with Burma and worries about its strategic security and permanent long-term interests in the region, India says it does not have the luxury of preaching democracy to the junta.
New Delhi believes international reaction to Burma has been in inverse proportion to the distance from Yangon. The US, EU and other Western democracies, far away from Burma, have been the harshest critics of the military regime.
Gambari and Menon exchanged views on the situation in Myanmar. India has made it plain that strong-arm tactics are not the way forward. Nor will sanctions make any difference.
New Delhi believes the international community can make matters worse by publicly dictating what the generals need to do. India favours private persuasion, which works much better that shouting from the roof tops.
Despite pressure from the international community, Asian countries, which have major interests and investments in Myanmar, have refused to follow the West in imposing sanctions or preaching democracy publicly to the junta. US, EU have slapped sanctions on Yangon.
President George Bush has asked China and India, the two countries which have an excellent equation with the generals, to persuade the military to begin talks with democratic leaders such as Aung San Suu Kyi.
Gambari will meet external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday and is also scheduled to call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before he flies out for the next leg of his tour to Japan and China.
He has already been to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. His effort is to get Myanmar’s Asian neighbours use their clout to get the generals bring back democracy to the troubled Buddhist nation.
While India has urged Yangon to expedite and broad base the process of national reconciliation and urged the generals to go for political reform, it has stopped short of condemning the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists.
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