ASEAN ministers 'to approve' Myanmar as 2014 chair

INDONESIA: Southeast Asian ministers said Tuesday they would approve Myanmar's bid to chair their 10-member bloc in 2014, in a major boost for its new government after a series of reform gestures.

Their move goes against warnings that giving Myanmar's nominally civilian administration the diplomatic prize so quickly will remove the incentive for more fundamental reforms in a nation still accused of major rights abuses.

"Everybody agrees to Myanmar, 2014," Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman told reporters at Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) talks on the Indonesian resort island of Bali. "They have taken positive steps toward democratisation. We should encourage them more by letting them host the meeting," he said. The bloc's leaders will make a formal decision this week based on the ministers' recommendation.

In 2006, Myanmar was forced to renounce the ASEAN rotating presidency in the face of intense criticism over its human rights record and failure to shift to democracy.

But since elections a year ago that ostensibly ended decades of military rule, the new regime has unveiled surprising measures including prisoner releases that have begun to rehabilitate the nation's pariah status.

A decision to allow Myanmar to chair ASEAN would involve it hosting the 10-nation group's summit, as well as the wider East Asia Summit that includes Myanmar's arch-critic the US, which maintains sanctions against the regime.

But Myanmar's Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin indicated that the decision was settled.

"All the ministers support Myanmar's chairmanship in 2014 and I welcome the decision," he told reporters.

Tan See Seng from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore said the decision would be a dream come true for Myanmar's leaders who have long sought legitimacy and chafed against Western sanctions. "Myanmar has really been putting in the right moves, putting on a good show, partly in regards to freeing up the political system, albeit in a very limited way," he told AFP.

"I think that for ASEAN leaders, giving Myanmar the chair would be a way of patting them on the back and encouraging them to continue what they have been recently doing domestically."

But Southeast Asian lawmakers said they were concerned that granting Myanmar the prize prematurely could end the reform process, and that it should introduce more concrete measures before being rewarded. NUSA DUA, Wednesday, AFP