BANGKOK — After the US announced its Burma policy review on Sept 28, all eyes will be on the Asean summit to be held in Thailand next week. It appears that Asean has been handed a golden opportunity to affect developments in Burma, by working more closely with a US that is “back” in southeast Asia, as Secretary of State Hilary Clinton remarked in Phuket in July.
The US is retaining sanctions on the Burmese regime, to the chagrin of many Asean nations, which do business with the junta and have urged an end to sanctions. However the US has started talking to the junta, the onset of what Assistant Secretary Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell regards as likely to be “a long, slow and step-by-step process.”
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