Hillary Clinton arrives in Burma to lukewarm reception

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Guardian

Making a diplomatically risky trip to the long-isolated Southeast Asian nation of Burma, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she wanted to see for herself whether new civilian leaders are truly ready to throw off 50 years of military dictatorship, a test that includes rare face-to-face meetings with former members of the junta whose brutal rule made a poor pariah state of one of the region's most resource-rich nations.

During her visit, Clinton will also encourage Burma, also known as Myanmar, to sever military and nuclear ties with North Korea.

Clinton arrived Wednesday in the capital of Naypyidaw on the first trip by a US secretary of state to Burma in more than 50 years. She is to meet senior officials Thursday before heading to the commercial capital of Yangon, where she will see opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is returning to the political scene after years of detention and harassment.

"I am obviously looking to determine for myself and on behalf of our government what is the intention of the current government with respect to continuing reforms both political and economic," Clinton told reporters before her arrival here.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/hillary-clinton-arrives-in-burma

[Poll_Blind]

1. Google "wikileaks AND burma AND nuclear" (without quotes) nt

PB

[NBachers]

2. I have infinite respect for Aung San Suu Kyi. Please, Burma, emerge from your long nightmare

[Beacool]

3. I don't think that she expected to be welcomed with open arms by the current government.

This is far more inspiring:

"Clinton's private dinner on Thursday and formal meeting with Suu Kyi on Friday probably will be the highlights of the visit. Suu Kyi, who intends to run for parliament in upcoming elections, has welcomed Clinton's trip and told Obama in a phone call earlier this month that engagement with the government would be positive."

:-)

[pampango]

4. "China wonders about reason for Clinton's Myanmar trip"

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/30/2525392/china-wonders-about-reason-for.html

The trip to the usually closed-off nation, the first by a U.S. secretary of state in more than half a century, boosted suspicions in China that the United States is pursuing a strategy of encirclement to blunt China's rise.

An editorial in the English-language edition of the Global Times, a Chinese state-controlled tabloid with nationalist leanings, said Clinton's appearance in Myanmar "raised speculations that the U.S. is trying to win the former British colony over from China, since it appears that China's neighboring countries have become increasingly pro-U.S."

That worry is sharper in conservative circles than it is among other Chinese observers. But the questions about the purpose of Clinton's visit are being asked by a wide range of China foreign-policy observers. "We are quite uncertain what kind of role the U.S. is going to play in Myanmar," said Zhu Feng, an international relations expert at Peking University. "Myanmar will be a test for American policy toward China."

Will the Americans push for reform in Myanmar, a development that China probably wouldn't oppose if such advances were controlled and measured? Or is the U.S. looking to use the nation on China's southern border as a counterweight to Beijing? Perhaps a bit of both?