Brussels signals readiness to hold talks with Burma

The Financial Times - Friday Mar 11 2005

The European Union on Thursday signalled a shift in tactics on Burma after declaring its readiness to engage in high-level bilateral talks with its isolated military junta for the first time in more than four years.

The decision follows threats by the EU last year to cancel the biannual Asia-Europe Meeting of leaders if Burma attended.

That meeting eventually went ahead in October after the EU tightened sanctions and Burma agreed in a backroom deal to send lower-level officials to the meeting.

However, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the new EU external relations commissioner, said on Thursday that European officials were now ready to engage Burma at the official level in what she called a shift in strategy.

"There is a certain shift because we have not talked to them for a very long time," she told reporters on the sidelines of an annual meeting of EU foreign min- isters with counterparts

from the Association of South East Asian Nations in Jakarta. "We have for the time being listened to our Asean partners. They have said they think this is the better way of dealing with [ Burma]."

Mrs Ferrero-Waldner said EU officials continued to push for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, and the inclusion of her National League for Democracy in a constitutional convention now under way.

But while Chris Patten, Mrs Ferrero-Waldner's predecessor, refused to meet with Burmese officials as the EU sought to raise international pressure on Burma, the Austrian diplomat said she believed engaging the junta was a better tactic. "It is better to have a clear, tough-languaged, constructive but critical dialogue. Because then you can really have a dialogue," she said.