Key Republicans Oppose Engagement with Burma

WASHINGTON — Key US congressional leaders of the opposition Republican Party have expressed open opposition to the Obama administration’s policy of engaging the authoritarian Burmese regime.

The Republican legislators were testifying at a Congressional hearing on Burma on Wednesday.

"I wish to underscore that I oppose dialogue with the Burmese military junta and oppose the offer of further carrots in the form of expanded economic assistance," said Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking Member of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

"Not surprisingly, engagement has been tried, and it has failed,” she said. “The Bush administration engaged with the Burmese junta twice.  Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Eric John, now our ambassador to Thailand, flew to Beijing in June of 2007, a mere two years ago, to engage with representatives of the Burmese regime.

"And what was the junta's response to Mr John's request for a more open and humane political system?  Following street protests a few months later in which Buddhist monks joined students, political activists and ordinary citizens, the regime responded with batons and bullets," Ros-Lehtinen said.

The Bush administration's second attempt at engagement followed Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. The US Agency for International Development Administrator at that time, Henrietta Fore, and Admiral Timothy Keating of the US Pacific Command, flew to Burma in the storm's aftermath with initial relief supplies, but the regime-controlled media described the humanitarian effort as a US preparation for invasion, the congresswoman said.

Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, who recently led the first talks ever held between US officials and Burmese military leaders, told the hearing that a team would head to Burma to follow up on his talks last month in New York.

Campbell told the committee that the US mission hoped to meet with the junta as well as detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and representatives of ethnic groups.

Stating that there has been no change in the situation in Burma, as hundreds of political prisoners including Suu Kyi remain imprisoned, and there has been a deterioration in the human rights situation in the country, Ros-Lehtinen asked: "In light of this, how can anyone credibly argue that engaging the Burmese regime with new carrots, however fresh, particularly as its behavior is getting markedly worse, advance US security interests and our foreign policy priorities?"

Republican Dana Rohrabacher said the new Burma policy of the Obama administration was alarming.