All neighbours ‘same’ to new Myanmar government

Aung San Suu Kyi is stressing on “good relations” with all neighbours in the new “people-centric” foreign policy of democratic Myanmar, a government think-tank says.

Experts at the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies (MISIS) said the de facto President was also “genuinely interested” in solving all outstanding problems with neighbours.

Suu Kyi, who could not be the President due to constitutional restrictions imposed during the military regime, is the foreign minister.

Exchanging views with a group of Bangladeshi journalists visiting Yangon, the MISIS experts on Monday said Bangladesh and Myanmar could come “closer”, by neutralising  irritants.

“To her (Suu Kyi) all the neighbours are same,” said former Ambassador U Wynn Lwin, a member of the MISIS.

The chairman, former Ambassador Nyunt Maung Shein, said MISIS would send a team to Dhaka next week to discuss energy sector cooperation, as well as security issues with the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI).

Nyunt Maung Shein

He said they were also ready to sign MoU with their counterpart, Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), to promote track II diplomacy in which all the stakeholders, except the government, discuss ways to improve ties.

Both Shein and Lwin served in Bangladesh in different capacities in the 1980s.

The new democratic Myanmar has ushered a new era of cooperation between the two neighbours.

The cooperation, which was once stuck due to the Muslim refugee issue, got momentum in recent years when the Myanmar opened up to the world.

The MISIS experts believed that Bangladesh and Myanmar relations were good before.

U Wynn Lwin

“And that’s why despite our good relations with Pakistan, we were the seventh country to recognise Bangladesh after the independence,” Lwin said.

“You can choose friends, but you cannot choose neighbours,” he said.

“We need discussions at the track II level, as we know certain issue is very sensitive to the government,” he said, appreciating Bangladesh’s efforts in this regard.

The Bangladesh embassy for the first time celebrated the Bangla New year in a big way bringing a cultural troupe from Bangladesh’s tribal community, who bore the similarities of the Burmese.

The think tank’s chairman suggested Bangladesh to hold a fair in Yangon to showcase the products to improve trade relations.

He said the new leadership wanted to build a “strong” Myanmar using the people’s power.

“We have so many problems, but people’s expectation is now very high,” the member Lwin said.

He said ethnic reconciliation would be a “big challenge” for the new government.