State media in army-ruled Myanmar yesterday hailed the visit by a US senator as a success and said it allowed the authorities to show their friendliness and respect for human rights.
A commentary carried by three official newspapers said US Democrat Senator Jim Webb’s three-day visit, the first by a senior US figure in more than a decade, demonstrated Myanmar’s openness towards international engagement.
“The visit of Mr Jim Webb is a success for both sides as well as the first step to the promotion of relations between the two countries,” the commentary said. “The Myanmar government was able to show a positive and friendly attitude in the area of international relations. It has also been able to show its respect of humanitarianism and human rights.”
Webb met at the weekend with junta supremo Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sent back to her lakeside home on Aug. 11 to serve another 18 months’ house arrest for violating an internal security law.
He called, unsuccessfully, for the Nobel peace laureate to be freed during talks that secured the release of US citizen John Yettaw, who was jailed on charges stemming from a swim to her home, which led to her latest trial.
The US is reviewing its policy towards Myanmar, and has extended a ban on US investment and imports from the country.
In Bangkok on Monday, Webb said he had urged the generals to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to take part in Myanmar’s political reform process and to ensure next year’s elections — the first in two decades — were free, fair and inclusive.
“I was very frank with [Than Shwe] in terms of my views,” said Webb, chairman of a Senate subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific. “The best thing on those issues is to see how the government responds.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
‘LIMITING MYSELF’: New Zealand’s foreign minister said that the omments by Phil Goff were ‘disappointing’ and made the diplomat’s position in the UK ‘untenable’ New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the UK has lost his job over remarks he made about US President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday. Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, made the comments at an event held by international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday. Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British prime minister Winston
RSS