Sanctions won't help victims

2008-05-17 23:06

Brussels - The EU's humanitarian aid chief warned on Saturday that Washington's decision to extend sanctions against the Myanmar junta would not help millions of vulnerable survivors of the cyclone disaster.

"I am still waiting to be shown a country where sanctions have been useful for the population," EU commissioner Louis Michel told Belgian television RTBF after returning from a two-day trip to meet junta officials in Myanmar.

"I am against sanctions in principle," he said after US President George W Bush extended sanctions on the regime for another year, urging world leaders to use dialogue to persuade the junta to open its doors to foreign aid.

Dialogue

"In the case of the Burmese junta, if you want them to move you have to have a dialogue," he argued.

Myanmar has sparked a wave of global condemnation for refusing a massive foreign relief effort for the disaster, which the junta says has left 134 000 people dead or missing.

"I am waiting for more people to do like me, to go and find the junta and tell them that it is unacceptable," said Michel, who reached an agreement with the junta to talk by phone daily with the head of its relief operation.

Michel, a former Belgian foreign minister, said his trip helped secure access on Saturday for nearly 80 Asian medics, in one of the first significant movements of foreign aid workers into the disaster zone.

"The Burmese authorities will certainly give a lot more ground. This is the start of a process that in my opinion will pick up momentum," Michel said.

Suspicions

The commissioner said he had found talks with the junta "pretty tough, even if the climate was fairly good".

"The Myanmar authorities have reservations and all kinds of suspicions towards the international community - they cannot imagine that the international community could come there out of generosity, out of humanitarian duty."

The Myanmar military, in power since 1962, is believed to be wary of any outside influence which could weaken its virtually total control on every aspect of life in the nation, formerly known as Burma.

"I told them that no country, even the greatest in the world, can handle such a cataclysm on its own," Michel said.

- AFP