July 30: Burma’s ruling junta bowed to international pressure this week, forgoing the 2006 chairmanship of a key Asian regional forum but still failing to win over critics who renewed calls for democratic reforms.

Malaysia’s New Straits Times said Burma’s decision not to take the chairmanship of the Association of South-East Asian Nations next year had averted a “potential diplomatic embarrassment for the 10-member regional grouping”.

Vijay Joshi in Hong Kong’s The Standard said the move had followed pressure from the US and the European Union, which have demanded that Burma “either move towards democracy and release pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi or forfeit its turn at the rotating chairmanship”.

He said Burma’s decision had saved the bloc “from an embarrassing standoff with the West”.

“Failure to do so would have resulted in an estrangement between the West and ASEAN, impacting on trade ties, something ASEAN countries can ill afford,” he wrote.

But in an editorial headlined “No cure for ASEAN”, The Jakarta Post warned the outcome merely provided “an opiate to temporarily ease a passing pain”.

It said the problem with ASEAN was that “it believes it can continuously overlook problems by simply refusing to deal with them”, while Burma’s problem was “it believes coercion and force to be a sovereign right”. “A combination of the two brings about a corrosive predicament that reduces one of the most dynamic regional groupings to a state of lethargy, typified by persistent grogginess,” the paper said.

But the International Herald Tribune’s Seth Mydans said Burma’s decision had been taken “with obvious reluctance” and praised ASEAN for “a display of decisiveness within the divided and usually cautious regional association”.

He said for Burma “it was a particularly painful rebuke, coming not from Burma’s usual critics in the West but from neighbouring countries that had welcomed it into their group eight years ago”.

The US State Department welcomed the move but accused Burma of resisting democratic reforms and renewed calls for the release of Suu Kyi, Agence France-Presse reported.

The Financial Times’ Amy Kazmin said the junta’s decision “temporarily takes the heat off ASEAN, which has seen its own reputation battered by the generals’ economic mismanagement and refusal to relax their grip after four decades of military rule”. But she warned, Burma would “remain a drag on ASEAN’s international credibility as long as the junta detains Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi”. AFP reported warnings from analysts that the successful campaign by the US and Europe to persuade Burma to forgo the chair “could result in the military bloc becoming more repressive and isolationist”. These analysts, it said, believed the backdown “marks an illusionary victory and won’t serve the cause of democratisation”.