Bush likely to cancel US ASEAN summit over Myanmar: diplomats

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush likely will cancel a summit he was planning with Southeast Asian leaders, following Myanmar's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests, ASEAN diplomats said here Sunday.

American officials indicated at a US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) senior officials dialogue in San Francisco about a week ago that "it would be difficult for President Bush to host the summit" which would have been held at his Texas ranch, an ASEAN diplomat told AFP.

"Considering what happened in Myanmar, we understand that it might also be politically sensitive to hold such a summit on US soil, especially during an electoral year," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bush made the summit proposal on September 7 when he met several ASEAN leaders at the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum summit in Sydney.

About three weeks later, Myanmar's military rulers launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks which, according to a UN report, leaving at least 31 people dead and 74 missing, and drawing global outrage.

Bush has already ordered two round of sanctions and threatened further US-led global measures against the ruling junta if it continued to ignore calls for a democratic transition.

The US leader usually reserves invitations to his sprawling Texas ranch for important allies but made the surprise invitation to the ASEAN leaders, including an official from Myanmar, in a bid to underline US commitment, which has been persistently questioned in the region.

White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe had said at the time that all ASEAN heads of state had been invited, except Myanmar, whose "level of participation is to be determined."

If the Texas summit -- which would have been held in early 2008 -- is canceled, it would be the second time Bush will scrap talks with leaders from the 10 ASEAN member states -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In May, he had agreed to attend a summit highlighting 30 years of official ties between Washington and Southeast Asia in Singapore on his way to the Sydney APEC talks but cancelled at the last minute due to the Iraqi crisis.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had also canceled participation at two ASEAN annual meetings, in 2005 and 2007, drawing criticism from the region which felt its stature had diminished in Washington's eyes.

Some ASEAN diplomats said if the Texas summit was off, Southeast Asian leaders might still try to host a meeting with Bush, adding that Washington was open to such a possibility.

"The fact that US still wants to consider having it in the ASEAN region shows they still understand the importance of engaging with ASEAN," one diplomat said.

Since Singapore holds the current ASEAN chair, it is a logical host for such talks, the official said, eyeing a "window of opportunity" when Bush attends the Beijing Olympics, to be held from August 8 to 24.

"But the crux of the issue -- Myanmar -- remains and it will continue to be messy, especially if Washington insists Myanmar should stay out of the talks and ASEAN surely feeling uncomfortable with that," the official said.

Bush has over the last couple of years met annually with leaders of seven ASEAN states -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- which are also members of the APEC forum -- at the sidelines of the forum's annual talks.

Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are not APEC members.

No More Vietnams (or Cambodias)

8.23.2007
Peter Wehner
CommentaryMagazine.com

In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday, President Bush reminded us of the agony and genocide that followed the American retreat in Vietnam:

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea. Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. . . . Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like “boat people,” “re-education camps,” and “killing fields.”

These words summon to mind a powerful passage from the third volume of Henry Kissinger’s memoirs, Years of Renewal, about the horror that befell Cambodia in the wake of Congress’s decision to cut off funding to the governments of Cambodia and South Vietnam.

Kissinger writes that messages were sent to top-level Cambodians offering to evacuate them, but to the astonishment and shame of Americans, the vast majority refused. Responding to one such offer, the former Prime Minister Sirik Matak sent a handwritten note to John Gunther Dean, the U.S. Ambassador, while the evacuation was in progress:

Dear Excellency and Friend:

I thank you very sincerely for your letter and for your offer to transport me towards freedom. I cannot, alas, leave in such a cowardly fashion. As for you, and in particular for your great country, I never believed for a moment that you would have this sentiment of abandoning a people which has chosen liberty. You have refused us your protection, and we can do nothing about it.

You leave, and my wish is that you and your country will find happiness under this sky. But, mark it well, that if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is no matter, because we all are born and must die. I have only committed this mistake of believing in you [the Americans].

Please accept, Excellency and dear friend, my faithful and friendly sentiments.

S/Sirik Matak

Kissinger continues:

On April 13th, the New York Times correspondent [Sydney Schanberg] reported the American departure under the headline, “Indochina Without Americans: For Most, a Better Life.” The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on April 17th . . . . The 2 million citizens of Phnom Penh were ordered to evacuate the city for the countryside ravaged by war and incapable of supporting urban dwellers unused to fending for themselves. Between 1 and 2 million Khmer were murdered by the Khmer Rouge until Hanoi occupied the country at the end of 1978, after which a civil war raged for another decade. Sirik Matak was shot in the stomach and left without medical help. It took him three days to die.

This is a sober reminder that there are enormous human, as well as geopolitical, consequences when nations that fight for human rights and liberty grow weary and give way to barbaric and bloodthirsty enemies.

US ties with SEA face setback

July 13, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US ties with Southeast Asia are facing a setback as President George W Bush cancelled his scheduled first summit with Asean leaders and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to the region for annual talks seems uncertain.

US officials have informed Singapore, host of the much-touted US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit, that the September 5 date for the talks was now "not convenient", Asean diplomats said.

September is critical for Bush as a much-awaited assessment of the situation in insurgency-wracked Iraq would be released that month amid a revolt within his own Republican party over failed war strategy.

"We are actually disappointed," one Asean diplomat told AFP.

The landmark summit was aimed at highlighting 30 years of official ties between Washington and Asean, which comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

On the heels of the failed summit is growing uncertainty about Rice attending an annual Asean ministerial meeting, which includes an August 1-2 dialogue between the region and its key trading partners as well as a high-level regional security forum.

The 27-member Asean Regional Forum (ARF) is the only high level official security group in the Asia-Pacific region, and includes Russia, India, China and the European Union.

Foreign diplomats say they have heard that Rice may skip the trip to the Asean meeting due to a conflict of schedules.

"We will keep you up to date on her travel schedules," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters Wednesday when asked whether Rice would attend the meeting or send her deputy, John Negroponte.

In 2005, Rice became the first American secretary of state to send her deputy to the ARF since it was first held in 1994, drawing criticism from the region which felt its stature had diminished in Washington's eyes.

Walter Lohman, former senior vice president of the US-Asean Business Council, said that based on information he had received, "it looks all but certain that Secretary Rice would take a pass on the Asean meetings".

With Bush's cancellation of his summit with Asean leaders and Rice's possible non-attendance, Lohman said the immediate future seemed grim for ties between the two sides.

"It is a significant setback in US-Asean relations after two good years and the question is, if the administration doesn't quickly get back on track, will there really be enough time in the next 18 months to patch it up," said Lohman, director of the Asian studies centre at Washington-based Heritage Foundation.

FORUM: Vietnam and communism's victims

Vietnam pulls the strings of
the marionette Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen

Khmer Krom demonstration in Washington DC (Photo: kounsrey, Khmer Krom Network)

Members of the Hmong community call for the release of former Laotion General Vang Pao, who is being held on charges of trying to overthrow the government of Laos, during a demonstration outside the Robert T. Matsui Federal Courthouse in in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, June 11, 2007. A magistrate judge ordered Pao, 77, who led a Hmong fighting force that helped the CIA and American forces during the Vietnam War, detained until his trial. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Thai Vang bows his head with other members of the Hmong community outside the Federal Courthouse in Sacramento, Calif., Monday, June 11, 2007, as they pray for the release of former guerilla leader Vang Pao for allegedly planning to overturn the current Laotian government. A federal magistrate ordered Van Pao who led a Hmong fighting force that helped the CIA and American forces during the Vietnam War, detained until his trial. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

June 17, 2007
By Mike Benge
The Washington Times (USA)

Last Tuesday, June 12, President Bush spoke at the dedication of the Victims of Communism Memorial that honors the memories of those killed in communist regimes. He said their deaths should remind the American public "evil is real and must be confronted." Ironically, this Friday, June 22, President Bush will honor the president of a tyrannical communist regime that murdered over a million Vietnamese and ethnic minorities with a White House visit during which he has the opportunity to confront that evil.

Recently, dozens of democracy activists, journalists, cyber-dissidents and Christian and other religious leaders were arrested and imprisoned by the Vietnamese communists. Congressional leaders and human-rights groups have charged Hanoi with "unbridled human-rights abuses," the "worst wave of oppression in 20 years." Those recently arrested are but a few of the hundreds of political and religious prisoners in Vietnam; some have been tried, while those less visible simply "disappeared." This mounting crackdown is a deliberate diplomatic slap in the face of the United States.

Hanoi brazenly aired on TV the kangaroo court trial of Thaddeus Nguyen Van Father Ly, who was muzzled during the proceedings. In Vietnamese, the colloquial phrase for censorship is "bit mieng" -- to cover the mouth. The picture of Father Ly's muzzling seems a literal enactment of an old cliche. Denied representation, Father Ly was sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

Mr. Bush's endorsement for Hanoi's admission into the World Trade Organization at last year's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, the removal of Vietnam from listed as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), and the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) were all predicated on the Communist Party substantially improving its human-rights record.

It should come as no surprise that after the granting of these privileges, the Vietnamese communists continued and intensified their repression.

Though Vietnam professes great strides in religious freedom, one must look under the veneer to seek the truth. For example, in 2006, the Vietnamese government claimed that "25 denominations" had received certificates to carry on religious activities, when in fact they were only individual house churches.

The price of these certificates is the surrender of religious freedom. The church must submit to the central Bureau of Religious Affairs (CBA) a list of the names and addresses of members, and only those approved by the CBA can attend services. All sermons must be approved by the CBA, and all sermons, including those of minorities, must be given in Vietnamese. Pastors and priests can neither deviate from the approved sermon nor proselytize, and the CBA police monitor all services.

Montagnards, Hmong and other Christians, Khmer Krom Monks, members of the Cao Dai faith, and Hoa Hao are still relentlessly persecuted. This is what Hanoi calls religious freedom, and the U.S. administration was naive enough to believe them and removed them from the Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) list of countries that suppress religious freedom.

Recently, the Vietnamese communist regime demanded of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues the cancellation of scheduled films to be screened at the May 22 forum. One film, "Hunted Like Animals," sponsored by the Hmong-Lao Human Rights Council depicted the genocide against the Hmong, and the other film depicted human-rights abuses against the Khmer Krom by the Vietnamese communists. It should come as no surprise that the United Nations acquiesced to the demands of the repressive Hanoi regime.

Reminiscent of the days of slavery in the "Old South," Montagnards who flee from repression in the Central Highlands are hunted down like wild animals. Vietnam pays bounties to Cambodian police for every Montagnard they catch and turn over to them. Vietnam considers refugees seeking asylum in another country to have violation its national security, punishable by imprisonment for up to 15 years.

Recently, three Montagnards were arrested by Cambodian police and charged with "human trafficking" for the so-called crime of aiding other Montagnards to flee the repression in Vietnam via the Montagnards' "underground railroad." Although Cambodia does little to stop the trafficking of children for prostitution, the communist regime is prosecuting these Montagnards on Vietnam's request in hopes it will convince the U.S. it is serious about trafficking. Vietnam pulls the strings of the marionette Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Reports continue from behind the curtain of silence drawn around the Central Highlands of the torture and deaths of Montagnard Christians. During a February trip to Hanoi, Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, told a press conference that the Vietnamese officials assured her that Montagnards can freely travel to the Embassy in Hanoi or the Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City to voice any grievances.

She said Montagnards should stay in Vietnam and not seek asylum in Cambodia. Given the Vietnamese communists history of repression and broken promises, how can Mrs. Sauerbrey be naive enough to believe Montagnards suffering persecution would ever to be allowed through the phalanx of Vietnamese police surrounding the U.S. Embassy and Consulate?

As predicted, Hanoi has announced the release of a few token high-profile political prisoners in an attempt to smooth the way for the arrival of Vietnam's President Triet, and in hopes of placating President Bush, the State Department and Congress. Can this administration be gullible enough to fall for yet another charade by the Vietnamese communists?

President Bush, keeping faith in the spirit of the Victims of Communism Memorial that "evil is real and must be confronted," should demand of Vietnam's president the release of all of the hundreds of political prisoners including those recently arrested and the more than 350 Christian Montagnards that seem to have been forgotten by this administration.

Mike Benge is an advocate for human rights and religious freedom in South East Asia.