Vietnam sticks to non-interference line on Myanmar
HANOI - Vietnam declined to comment on Wednesday
on news the military junta in Yangon was engaged in talks
with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, sticking to its
longstanding line that outside countries should not
interfere in Myanmar.
"We do not make any commentaries on the domestic
affairs of other countries," said a terse one-line statement
from foreign ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh.
As current holder of the rotating presidency of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Hanoi has made
every effort to prevent the 10-member grouping from
heeding mounting international pressure to intervene.
On the eve of a breakthrough ministerial meeting with the
European Union in Laos last month, at which ASEAN
finally broke its silence on Myanmar and issued a joint
statement calling for an "early dialogue" between the junta
and the opposition, Hanoi insisted it would brook no
discussion of the issue.
Myanmar's political situation was "its internal affair and
will not figure on the agenda of the Vientiane meeting," a
foreign ministry statement said, even though Foreign
Minister Nguyen Dy Nien signed up to the joint statement
just four days later.
Itself a regular butt of Western human rights criticism,
Vietnam routinely insists on the principle of
non-interference in other countries' internal affairs and
also roundly criticised Western intervention in the former
Yugoslavia.
Agence France Presse - January 11, 2001.
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