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ASEAN aid meeting on Myanmar seen offering little

Reuters - Wednesday, May 14

"ASEAN's engagement policy has completely failed. They have not elicited a single democratic reform from the regime." (Additional reporting by Ahmad Pathoni in JAKARTA and Koh Gui Qing in SINGAPORE) - SINGAPORE, May 13 - Southeast Asian nations will meet next Monday in Singapore to discuss help for cyclone-hit Myanmar, but analysts say the group will not commit to a regional aid package or apply much pressure to speed up relief efforts.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations said on Tuesday it was sending an emergency rapid-assessment team to Myanmar, which will report to the meeting, but critics said the group was moving too slowly given Cyclone Nargis struck the country on May 2.

So far, members Singapore and Thailand are among countries to give assistance, including food, medicine and offers for rescue teams, but there has been no coordinated regional response from a grouping that aims to maintain peace and integrate economically.

ASEAN has a long-standing policy of not interfering in the internal affairs of member states.

"ASEAN normally doesn't give as an organisation because it doesn't have the assets -- there may be an increase in individual contributions," said Rodolfo Severino, ASEAN Secretary-General from 1998-2002 and research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asia Studies in Singapore.

Ngurah Swajaya, director for ASEAN political and security affairs at Indonesia's foreign ministry, told Reuters Myanmar's foreign minister Nyan Win will brief the other foreign ministers at the meeting, to assess needs for relief and reconstruction.

Between 1.2 and 1.9 million people are struggling to survive in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta, where delays by the military government in admitting large scale aid are threatening a massive humanitarian disaster [ID:nBKK297260].

Up to 100,000 are dead or missing.

"It's shocking that it has taken ASEAN nearly 3 weeks to organise a meeting to deal with the biggest humanitarian disaster to hit ASEAN since the tsunami," said Debbie Stothard, co-ordinator for the NGO Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma.

"This is the time when ASEAN has to prove itself -- it has the potential to take leadership of this situation," she said. "ASEAN has got to bring the Myanmar regime into the 21st century -- not a medieval approach to natural disasters."

SHARP CRITICISM

Myanmar's military rulers have come under criticism from the United States, which already imposes sanctions on the junta, for being slow in allowing in aid workers.

Severino said ASEAN members had not faced difficulties in getting aid to Myanmar, other than destroyed infrastructure. He said ASEAN was unlikely to use a carrot and stick approach in offering assistance in exchange for greater openness or moves towards democracy.

"I don't think ASEAN does things that way...People are dying and countries should not make political points," he said.

ASEAN foreign ministers signed a regional agreement on disaster management and emergency response in Vientiane in 2005. She said ASEAN would bear the brunt of a relief effort that is only delivering an estimated one tenth of the supplies needed, since a social and economic crisis would increase the likelihood of refugees or illegal migrants heading to Thailand and beyond.

"The long delay in having the meeting indicates that, like the regime, they are not taking this crisis seriously, and so we are not at all hopeful that anything positive will come out of it," said Mark Farmaner of the NGO Burma Campaign based in Britain.

"ASEAN's engagement policy has completely failed. They have not elicited a single democratic reform from the regime." (Additional reporting by Ahmad Pathoni in JAKARTA and Koh Gui Qing in SINGAPORE)

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