BurmaNet News, June 9, 2010

[Editor]

June 9, 2010, Issue #3979

INSIDE BURMA
Irrawaddy: Army increases surveillance of possible defectors
Khonumthung News: Child soldiers spotted in Chin state army camp
Kachin News Group: Three more villages being shifted from Myitsone dam site

BUSINESS / TRADE
DVB: Burma to fix gas prices

DRUGS
SHAN: Shan Drug Watch: Burma’s 15 year drug effort still missing its targets

INTERNATIONAL
Independent (UK): Two men the junta could not silence
DVB: N Korea specialist eyed as Burma envoy

OPINION / OTHER
Foreign Policy: Inside Burma's black box – David E. Hoffman
Irrawaddy: Stumbling toward the election – Htet Aung
FOXNews.com: New tempests over Burma as U.N. aid rolls in – George Russell




____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

June 9, Irrawaddy
Army increases surveillance of possible defectors

Security and surveillance surrounding possible defectors in the Burmese
army has increased in the aftermath of a report disclosing the army's
intent to acquire a nuclear program and missiles, according to Burmese
military sources.

Military personnel in at least three secret sites in the country either
related to tunnel construction or a possible nuclear program are now being
questioned in regard to their loyalty and for any possible connection with
Burmese army defector Maj Sai Thein Win, who disclosed information about
an alleged nuclear program.

A source close to Rangoon Military Affair Security (MAS) said that more
documents and photographs about a possible nuclear reactor and missile
projects could be leaked. Military headquarters has issued instructions to
collect all leaked documents and photographs relating to secret tunnel and
nuclear programs from the Internet websites of foreign media and foreign
embassies.

“After leaks of more and more information about secret military projects
to the outside world recently, we are now wondering if there will be
another defector,” said an officer in  Naypyidaw's military region
command.

The defector, Maj Sai Thein Win, was believed to have had a personal
relation with Maj-Gen Thein Htay, the deputy-chief of Defense Industries,
who played a  key role in modernizing equipment for the army and who
supported the idea of a missile program.

Military sources said that Thein Htay had earned the trust of Snr-Gen Than
Shwe and was involved in improving military facilities including tunnels
for missiles, aircraft and even naval ships.

The Myanmar [Burma] Defense Industries, which consists of 13 major
factories, manufacturers modern armaments, in addition to small arms,
ammunition, mines and spare parts. Sources said MDI was interested in
acquiring or making surface-to-surface missiles, in addition to nuclear
weapons.

“The major challenge facing the top leaders is how to prevent their own
people from going against them,” according to a source close to military
units in Naypyidaw. “Now top leaders are more worried about the internal
situation within the army than about how it is perceived by the outside
world.”

In January, ex-Major Win Naing Kyaw and other two people were sentenced to
life and long-term imprisonment in a special court in Insein prison for
leaking military secrets to outside of the  country.

Win Naing Kyaw is a former staff officer with the State Peace and
Development Council Secretary-2, the late Lt-Gen Tin Oo.

Sources said that during the past few years, as many as 200 military
officials have defected, many with overseas training. A military source
outlined three major factors in the rise in army defectors: lack of strong
connections with the regime's leadership, an extremely rigid  bureaucracy
and low pay.

The regime’s state-run TV and newspapers have not responded to the
allegations broadcast by international media involving a nuclear reactor,
tunnel building or missile manufacturing.

The video footage used by the Democratic Voice of Burma and Al-Jazeera
about Burmese missile expert defector Maj Sai Thein Win is said to be
popular among soldiers and officers in Burma, according to several
military sources.

A military officer told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that many Burmese
military personal acquired the news from foreign-based radio and TV
stations.

____________________________________

June 9, Khonumthung News
Child soldiers spotted in Chin state army camp

Hakha: That the Burmese junta continues to recruit under age persons into
the Burmese Army, despite its posturing that it has banned such
recruitment, was evident with reports of child soldiers sighted in the
Falam town based LIB 268 in Chin state western Burma.

Maung Thet Lwin (16) recruited by the Kalemyo military base in October
2009 said, “I joined because I had some problems with my family members.
But now I regret the decision. I cannot leave the army though my family
had requested our commanders to let me go. They refused.”
Thet lwin is now posted in the cattle farm of a military camp near
Talangzang village 25 miles from Hakha town.

There are more child soldiers in the Falam based LIB 268 military camp,
Thet lwin added.
The Burmese military junta had signed on the agreement of Human Rights on
Children on 16 July 1991, and became a member of CRC on 15 August 1991.

Burmese law prohibits recruiting persons under the age of 18 years into
the military. But the government flouts its own law.

Recently the Weekly Eleven journal in Burma reported that over a hundred
child soldiers were sent back home by the military regime to their
parents.

A UN statement said that child soldiers are still being recruited by the
Burmese military regime and the armed groups like the Karenni National
Progressive Party (KNPP) and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).
____________________________________

June 9, Kachin News Group
Three more villages being shifted from Myitsone dam site

The Burmese military junta in its relentless effort to continue with the
Irrawaddy Myitsone dam project in Northern Burma, Kachin State is forcing
three more villages to relocate from the site, said local sources.

Over 100 villagers from Dawng Pan, Sut Ngai Yang and Shoi Ba villages near
the dam project site are being forcibly relocated by the regime since
early June, said the sources.

This is the second move at relocating villages after Mazup village was
shifted on May 28 by the junta.

“People (workers) came from downtown and pitched into relocate the
villages,” said the source.

When the first village Mazup was relocated there were more than 200 people
pressed into service by the junta like those from the junta-backed Union
Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), Burmese Army officers,
soldiers and civilian workers.

Since May 1, the junta’s Kachin State Administrative Office (Ya-Ya-Kha)
has ordered over 1,000 civilians from Myitkyina and Waingmaw townships to
help to relocate villages around the dam construction site.

At least 40 families were forcibly shifted from their homes, where they
have lived for decades. They were moved to a new place called Lungga Zup
village about 18 miles from Myitkyina the capital of Kachin State, where
small new houses have been constructed by the regime for the villagers.

The junta prohibited the villagers from taking along their cattle and
other domestic animals to the new place, said the villagers. However, a
few families with farms in the mountain side are still left in the
villages.

Irrawaddy Myitsone dam is being constructed by the state-owned China Power
Investment Corporation (CPI) jointly with Burma’s Asia World Company and
junta’s No.1 Ministry of Electric Power. The project got off the ground in
December 21, 2009 despite vehement protests by Kachin people and
environmentalists, who fear a severe ecological impact.

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

June 9, Democratic Voice of Burma
Burma to fix gas prices – Joseph Allchin

Some 250 privatised petrol stations will open across Burma tomorrow with
an apparent fix on prices at 2,500 kyat ($US2.5) per gallon.

But analyst Aung Thu Nyein believes the price fixing is more about
security than economics, with fuel price hikes prompting both the 1988
uprising and the September 2007 ‘Saffron Revolution’.

The Weekly Eleven magazine in Burma said that the government will
distribute the fuel at 2,350 kyat ($US2.35) on the gallon and forbid
retailers from selling above the 2,500 kyat mark.

The problem of fluctuation of gas prices is compounded by Burma’s limited
refining capabilities, which have degraded steadily since independence in
1948 through lack of investment and upkeep. As a result, the country is
reliant upon imports of refined petrol or diesel – the process of refining
crude oil is responsible for around 28 percent of the cost of the finished
product.

At present crude prices are relatively low, but the trend over time,
particularly with the rapid growth of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia,
India and China), means that prices are liable to rise. As a result, the
oil producing cartel OPEC could increase steadily the cost on the barrel.
If a country has the capability to refine oil, pump price can to an extent
be controlled.

While international gas price increases will affect this, so will a
country’s lack of foreign currency reserves needed to buy refined
petroleum products. Many suspect this was the cause of the 2007 price
rises in Burma in which both natural gas and petrol rose by around 500
percent, with no official explanation provided.

Australia-based Burma economics expert Sean Turnell points out that much
of the Burmese government’s foreign reserve earnings are burrowed away in
Singaporean banks in order to hide them from the public accounts, while
the ruling generals can also utilise the discrepancy between official and
real exchange rates.

But if the junta is unable to make use of the vast profits accrued from
natural gas sales at realistic exchange rates, it is liable to run low on
foreign exchange reserves. This issue is particularly concerning for them
given the stringent US and EU sanctions on Burma that increase costs for
business people trading outside the country.

Burmese citizens are also watchful of fuel price fluctuations given their
reliance on power generators during the country’s frequent electricity
blackouts. Electricity shortages were compounded by a leak on a gas
pipeline used to generate electricity on 2 June which left the commercial
hub Rangoon some 300 megawatts short of sufficient electricity supply.

A nation like China meanwhile enacts export limitations to control the
price of commodities. The lack of a global market for raw materials keeps
prices low and in turn keeps the economies higher up the chain
flourishing; this is something that both the US and the EU have been
heavily critical of.

In the case of Burma, export limitations on natural gas or crude oil,
given greater refining capabilities, would help the nearly two billion
barrels of proven crude oil reserves in Burma work for the Burmese
economy, but at present such a provision seems a pipe dream.

Meanwhile the Burmese government’s foreign currency supervising commission
has made what appears a welcome liberalisation by allowing foreign
earnings to be used for imports, breaking from previous stipulation that
only export earnings could officially be utilised to make imports. This
could increase the flow of foreign currency into the nation, with such
speculation causing the unofficial rate on the kyat to rise against the
dollar.

____________________________________
DRUGS

June 9, Shan Herald Agency for News
Shan Drug Watch: Burma’s 15 year drug effort still missing its targets –
Hseng Khio Fah

11 years have passed yet the ruling military’s 15-year drug eradication
efforts that will end by 2014 have not been effective, according to Shan
Drug Watch, a program of SHAN focused on Burma’s drug problem.

In 1999, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) embarked on a
15-year plan to eradicate the cultivation and production of all drugs in
Burma by 2014. The total townships targeted were 51: 43 in Shan State, 4
in Kachin, 2 in Kayah or Karenni and 2 in Chin states.

Up to this date, only 10 townships out of the 51 targeted “townships”
could claim as poppy free while the rest are still growing poppies,
according to Shan Drug Watch’s draft report.

Moreover, the 10 “Free” townships were just areas in Shan State and mostly
in ethnic ceasefire controlled areas: 6 in United Wa State Army (UWSA), 1
in National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA) or Mongla, 2 in Myanmar
National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) aka Kokang and 1 in Panghsai
sub-township, Muse township, Burma Army controlled area.

There are actually only 39 targeted townships in Shan State and not 43
townships as designated in the plan, because Mongkoe and Panghsai are in
Muse Township, and the 6 Wa townships have been lumped into 4 townships,
according to Khuensai Jaiyen, SHAN’s Editor in Chief.

Apart from the10 townships already mentioned and 2 other townships –
Pindaya and Ywa-ngan-, at least 23 townships not targeted in the 15 year
plan were also growing poppies: 14 townships in Shan State (6 in North, 5
in South and 3 in East), 5 in Kachin, 1 in Kayah State or Karenni, 2 in
Chin State and 1 in Sagaing.

“But the junta can say they can eliminate opium production by 2014,
whatever the situation is now,” Khuensai said, “because they have the
power to order the farmers not to grow it, when the deadline arrives.
However, it will not be sustainable unless there is an effective
substitution program.”

To get rid of poppy production the people must have access to effective
substitution.  If there is no effective substitution for the people, then
people just have to leave the country, according to him.

A poppy farmer who just fled to Thailand said, “We can stay without
planting them if we don’t have to pay a lot of taxes to the Burma Army and
if we just have to feed our own family. But now we have to pay heavy taxes
to them. If we don’t plant poppies, how can we pay those taxes?”

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

June 9, Independent (UK)
Two men the junta could not silence – Andrew Buncombe

One is in exile, the other jailed for criticising Burma's dictatorship.
Yet the release of a scathing poem shows artists Zarganar and Htein Lin
are still a thorn in the regime's side.

When Burmese authorities sentenced the popular comedian and artist
Zarganar to spend 59 years in jail, they must have hoped to silence a man
known for criticising the junta. Yet, though the man celebrated for his
films, plays and poetry was dispatched to a jail far from his family's
home in Rangoon, it appears that life behind bars has not reduced either
his creative powers or his willingness to speak out.

In recent weeks, a newly crafted poem - brief but powerful - has been
smuggled out of jail and passed to friends of the 49-year-old artist. It
reads:

"It's lucky my forehead is flat
Since my arm must often rest there
Beneath it shines a light I must invite

>From a moon I cannot see

In Myitkyina."

The poem, which hints at the hardships endured by prisoners in Myitkyina
jail in the far north of Burma, was received by Zarganar's friend Htein
Lin. The Burmese artist, a former political prisoner who now lives in the
UK, not only translated the poem into English with the help of his British
wife, but also produced a compelling illustration to accompany his
friend's lines. The striking image suggests his friend at the bars of his
jail cell, his head pressed into his forearms. It is set against a
backdrop of hands, reaching upwards.

"I met him first in 1984 at university and we became friends. We later
worked together," said Htein Lin. "I spent six-and-a-half years in jail.
When I came out from prison I had no place to go. Zarganar gave me the
chance to live with him. He also showed me how artists can use computers
to help their work... I felt I had to do the illustration."

Zarganar, who was born into a middle-class, intellectual Rangoon family,
first started performing and organising theatre productions when he was a
student. In doing so, he was stepping into a long tradition of artists and
comedians in Burma who have used their platforms to gently prod and
satirise the authorities. He was so popular that he regularly appeared on
television, even though one of his plays, Beggar, poked fun at dictator Ne
Win, who died in 2002.

The artist finally fell foul of the authorities and was arrested and
jailed when he took part in the massive democracy demonstrations of 1988,
starting a long-running game of cat-and-mouse that stretched over the next
two decades. He was first banned from putting on theatre shows and then,
in 2006, prevented from participating in any artist productions.

Yet it was the aftermath of 2008's Cyclone Nargis that led to his current
jail sentence. With the government's response inadequate, Zarganar was one
of many Burmese citizens who took it upon themselves to work together to
collect and distribute food and other essentials to hundreds of thousands
of people in the Irrawaddy Delta whose homes and livelihoods had been
destroyed by the storm.

He was arrested after speaking to foreign journalists about the
government's lack of action, telling Irrawaddy magazine that the
authorities had tried to prevent groups such as his from collecting aid
for those in need.

"At the beginning we took risks, and we had to move forward on our own.
Sometimes we had confrontations with the authorities," he said at the
time. "For example, they asked us why we were going on our own without
consulting them and wanted us to negotiate with them. They said they
couldn't guarantee our lives."

Confronted with mounting criticism of their response to a natural disaster
that had killed an estimated 135,000 people, the junta jailed dozens of
dissidents, journalists and critics. Zarganar was sentenced to 59 years, a
term that was subsequently reduced to 35 years. The artist is now held in
Myitkyina jail in Kachin state, around 900 miles from Rangoon.

As with many political prisoners, Zarganar was imprisoned far from his
home. Anna Roberts, of the Burma Campaign UK, said it was a systematic
policy by the regime that had been stepped up after the 2007 democracy
demonstrations.

"It's part of the punishment policy of the regime," she said. "The diet
and medical facilities are so poor inside the jails that political
prisoners in particular depend on their families for extra supplies. The
regime has developed the policy of sending political prisoners to remote
prisons. It means it is difficult and expensive for families to visit."

News of the new poem comes as a documentary about Zarganar by the British
documentary maker Rex Bloomstein, This Prison Where I Live, is to be
premiered later this month at the Munich Film Festival. Mr Bloomstein,
whose previous works have examined various human rights issues and the
Holocaust, said he met Zarganar in Burma three years ago.

"I found him one of the most remarkable people I have ever filmed. He
really is a remarkable man - fearless, incorruptible," said Mr Bloomstein.
"He is a wonderful example of the Burmese spirit. This is the way [the
junta] is trying to crush that spirit, but they won't."

Htein Lin, who was included in a recent project on Burmese political
prisoners by the award-winning photographer James Mackay, said he hoped to
hear more from his friend, despite his incarceration. The comedian is one
of more than 2,100 political prisoners that human rights groups believe
are languishing inside Burma's jails.

"For me, it was not a surprise when I heard he had written the poem. I
know him very well and during a [previous] time in jail he wrote an entire
movie script in his head. As soon as he came out of jail he produced the
film and people were saying, 'When did you write that script'," he said.
"But he had worked on it when he was in jail, every day. All the time he
is working. That is why this was not a surprise. I know he is creating a
poem or a joke every day."

____________________________________

June 9, Democratic Voice of Burma
N Korea specialist eyed as Burma envoy

The US must appoint an envoy to Burma “without delay” in light of
allegations that the pariah state is developing a nuclear weapons
programme and has traded military hardware with North Korea, a senior US
senator has said.

In a letter yesterday to US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Jim Webb,
who last week cancelled a trip to Burma after the allegations surfaced,
called on Washington to examine “objectively and factually
and in a timely
manner” the allegations.

He said that the appointment of an envoy was a requirement of the 2008 Tom
Lantos Block Burmese JADE Act, but that the position remained empty. An
envoy, he said, would promote “multilateral sanctions, direct dialogue
with the [Burmese junta] and democracy advocates, and support for
nongovernmental organizations operating in Burma and neighbouring
countries”.

The US ambassador to Thailand, Eric John, was given a “strong
recommendation” by Webb as someone fit for this role, largely for his
knowledge of East Asian affairs, which includes “long experience in
dealing with the North Korean regime on issues that might be similar to
those we will be facing in Burma”.

The US appears to take the warming relationship between Burma and North
Korea as a real threat, but has remained coy about the extent of its
knowledge on the relationship: Webb mentioned in his letter reports about
a weapons shipment from North Korea to Burma this year, which the US is
believed to have known about, but added that the state department was yet
to publicly clarify the details.

State department spokesperson Philip Crowley told reporters yesterday that
he and Clinton hadn’t yet seen the letter, but asserted that Burma remains
a country “of significance” to the US. However he declined to answer
whether the appointment of an envoy was a viable option for the US, saying
only that Washington was “watching closely” the relationship with North
Korea.

Part of the reason for US concern is its waning influence in Southeast
Asia, which has allowed China to strengthen economic and political ties
with, among others, Burma and North Korea. Huge gas sales to China have
largely financed Burma’s weapons programme and have supported clandestine
trade with Pyongyang, which appears to have evaded a tight UN arms
embargo.

In his letter, Webb lamented the silence from the state department
regarding recent weapons exports from North Korea to Burma; it is alleged
that a ship offloaded cargo at a Rangoon port around April this year,
although more specific details have not been released.

He said that he and his staff “worked for weeks to seek public
clarification of this allegation, but the State Department provided none”.
But as the results of a five-year investigation by DVB into Burma’s
nuclear ambitions and its ties with North Korea began to surface last
week, Webb cancelled what would have been his second visit to Burma.

____________________________________
OPINION / OTHER

June 9, Foreign Policy
Inside Burma's black box – David E. Hoffman

A former Army major has courageously parted the curtains on what looks
like secret efforts at missile and nuclear activity in Burma. Sai Thein
Win delivered to a dissident group, the Democratic Voice of Burma, a
fascinating cache of color photographs and personal recollections that
reinforce the suspicion that the generals who run the country have
launched a primitive quest for nuclear weapons.

Looking at the evidence, retired United Nations weapons inspector Robert
E. Kelley wrote: “Photographs could be faked, but there are so many and
they are so consistent with other information and within themselves that
they lead to a high degree of confidence that Burma is pursuing nuclear
technology.” Kelley’s report, co-written with Ali Fowle of Democratic
Voice of Burma, can be found here, and a discussion of the technical side
at Arms Control Wonk.

Aside from the revelatory nature of the materials, what’s so interesting
about Sai Thein Win’s cache is that he decided to bring it out. He reminds
us that despite the very best technology in intelligence and monitoring --
satellite imagery and listening devices -- there’s tremendous value in the
eyewitness account of a participant in a closed state like Burma, also
known as Myanmar.

Some of the snapshots inside the Burmese program -- pieces of equipment,
drawings and such -- could never have been captured by a satellite. Sai
Thein Win was not a nuclear expert, but a missile engineer, and in some
cases he is reporting on overheard conversations or trying to puzzle out
bits and pieces of evidence. Nonetheless, the generals who rule the
country must be just fuming.

The disclosures recall another case more than 20 years ago. On a drizzly
cold October day in 1989, Vladimir Pasechnik, director of a top-secret
Soviet biological weapons facility, defected to Britain. When he got
settled in a safe house, what he described was nothing short of
astounding.

For many years, Western intelligence agencies puzzled over hints the
Soviets possessed a germ warfare program, but lacked solid proof. (The
satellite images didn’t show what was going on inside laboratory test
tubes.) The thinking among many analysts and policymakers in the West was
that nuclear weapons were so devastating, they trumped all. The analysts
assumed the Soviets had reached a similar conclusion.

As I described in The Dead Hand, Pasechnik changed all that. He disclosed
the Soviets were working on pathogens as strategic weapons, and that they
had built a hidden archipelago of laboratories and industrial plants in
violation of their treaty obligations. He revealed a different Soviet
mindset than the West had assumed existed for many years.

Despite our advanced efforts to glean understanding from the hard data of
satellites and intercepts, the greater challenge is to get inside the
minds of people, to figure out what leaders are thinking, especially those
who cherish deception and mask their ambitions. Sometimes this information
comes by good intelligence work, and sometimes it spills out quite in the
open.

Sai Thein Win took his evidence to a dissident group and they used
nongovernmental experts to analyze it. Others have taken their case to the
press, or to intelligence agencies. Almost all the people who do this go
through deep emotional turmoil and have widely varying motivations,
including antipathy to the state they are betraying. They also seem to
possess some deep well of trust that those who receive their information
will do the right thing. In the end, the world’s ability to stop
proliferation may depend on insiders continuing to walk away from secret
weapons programs, a process sometimes called "societal verification."

The Burma file offers a valuable clue about the world we live in today.
Instead of trying to isolate our adversaries, we should do what we can to
generate winds of glasnost or openness in those states which have
something to hide.

This is the age of two powerful revolutions: information and
globalization. With illicit weapons threats more diffuse than during the
Cold War, it is never going to be easy to detect them. Yet the information
and globalization revolutions should not frighten us. The trick is to
harness them. Instead of “containment,” cutting ourselves off from places
like Iran and North Korea, we ought to be everywhere, sitting in the cafes
and apartments, walking down alleys and doing business with all kinds of
people, keeping our ears to the ground. The best information often comes
from the hard detective work of diplomacy and intelligence, the one-to-one
contacts and acute observations that only people can make.

Some of those who show up in cafes will be seeking pay and a comfortable
retirement abroad. Others will act out of conscience. The important point
is that someone be there to listen.

Certainly there will be dead ends, deceptions, blunders and cover-ups. It
was hard, unforgiving work to figure out the intentions of Soviet leaders
during the Cold War, and not always successful. Yet we have more tools
today than ever before.

Who will be having coffee with the next Sai Thein Win?

____________________________________

June 9, Irrawaddy
Stumbling toward the election – Htet Aung

It is now more than three months since the unveiling of electoral laws on
March 8, but the Burmese military junta has yet to announce an election
date. Political parties that registered are still waiting to hear if they
have been accepted.

Once a party has been accepted, it has 90 days to submit a party
membership list. Even if all parties have all their member lists verified
within that time frame, it will already be well into September and no
party will have been allowed to campaign.

The junta formed the 18-member Union Election Commission (EC) on March 12.
Its members were handpicked by the military generals; it is led by a
former judge advocate general, Maj-Gen Thein Soe.

The junta and the EC have had ample time to implement the preparatory
steps for an election, but it is increasingly evident that no polling day
can be set before November.

In the meantime, the registration process for political parties continues
with no deadline (May 6 was the deadline for existing parties, such as the
NLD, to register, but new parties can still apply for registration).

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, an official at the EC office in
Naypyidaw said, “Party registration still remains open. Formal
notification will be announced one week before the deadline.”

Even parties whose registration has been approved cannot officially open
offices or a headquarters nor hoist flags or place signs on their doors.
New political parties are afraid of doing something wrong or committing an
unwitting mistake in case the authorities harass them or take action
against the party.

“Please don't forget we are still under military rule,” said Ohn Lwin, the
leader of the registered and approved National Political Alliances. “We
are conducting our political activities very carefully.”

Because the Political Parties Registration Law was strictly designed to
reduce the proliferation of too many political parties (as in the 1990
election), each registered party must submit a list to the EC within 90
days of the party's acceptance with details of a minimum number of party
members—1000 members for a party that plans to contest the election
nationwide, and 500 members for regional parties.

The EC will scrutinize the membership details submitted by the political
parties and retain the power to disband any party who can't record the
minimum number of party members or whose members fail to meet the
requirements of the military junta's Constitution and election laws.

On top of that, the EC approves the registration of parties on different
dates. For example, as the registration of the junta-backed Union
Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) was approved by the EC on June 8,
the deadline for the party's membership recruitment will be on Sept. 6.
Parties not yet approved will be later, perhaps weeks later, than that.
Only after the completion of the process will the EC announce the number
and names of political parties to contest the election.

The next step is the candidate nomination process. In 1990, the former EC
announced an election date as soon as it initiated the period for
candidate nomination. If we are to follow this precedent, we can assume
this will happen no earlier than mid-September.

The EC will then receive and scrutinize candidate lists from all parties
for all constituencies they wish to contest for all three parliaments: the
People's Parliament (Pyithu Hluttaw); the Nationalities' Parliament
(Amyotha Hluttaw); and the state and regional parliaments.

Taking into account the Burmese military establishment's fastidious
surveillance of political aspirants and its notorious red tape, it is
likely to be well into October before this process is finalized and the
campaign is finally able to begin.

To date, the EC has failed to provide a specific time frame for any of
these processes, all of which are handled by most countries in a
relatively short period, sometimes even just a few weeks.

On top of that, the EC will not open a process of voter registration,
relying instead, we assume, on its 2008 constitutional referendum list.
Neither has there been any announcements regarding out-of-country voting
or postal voting, two common democratic options that would require opening
a pre-election window of several weeks.

Moreover, the EC has failed to conduct any of its activities in a
transparent manner. The public has no idea what to expect, and the parties
are unable to work out a time frame or strategy toward the election.

Some political parties have expressed concern that they will not have
enough time to campaign if the election is set for the widely predicted
month of November.

“If the election is held in November, we estimate that the maximum
campaign period will be one month,” said former premier U Nu's daughter,
Than Than Nu, who is the general secretary of the Democratic Party
(Myanmar).

Election observers inside and outside the country are finding it
impossible to evaluate the degree of the EC’s independence and
impartiality—the two core values accepted internationally—in the party
registration process, not to mention its duty to appoint the election
sub-commissions, returning officers and polling officers across the
country.

We are told that the EC has been busy with political party registration,
as well as forming  district and township sub-commissions and training the
staff.

During the 1990 election, the political parties had a three-month campaign
period. That will not happen this time. The junta will abide by its
strategy to curtail the activities of pro-democracy parties while allowing
the USDP to campaign openly and exploit the electoral laws and loopholes.

Come election day, the military assumes that with the additional
assistance of voter intimidation, fraud and ballot-rigging, it can
confidently expect the USDP to win a landslide victory in each of the
three parliaments.

Htet Aung is the chief reporter of the Election Desk at The Irrawaddy.

____________________________________

June 9, FOXNews.com
New tempests over Burma as U.N. aid rolls in – George Russell

The United Nations, which is quietly planning a major aid program to North
Korea despite U.N. sanctions against the regime, also intends to ship
hundreds of millions of dollars to Burma, another brutal Asian
dictatorship, despite allegations that the country also known as Myanmar
is trying to acquire nuclear weapons technology.

At least one U.N. organization, the United Nations Children's fund, or
UNICEF, has now found the Burma issue too thorny to tackle — for the
moment.

UNICEF has discreetly postponed approval of a four-year plan starting next
January to spend $198.5 million, including $115 million in additional
donated funds, for its programs in the country at least until the fall —
while the nuclear weapons concerns have a chance to die down.

UNICEF's plans, prepared in close collaboration with the Burmese
government, were originally intended for approval at a four-day meeting of
the organization's 36-nation supervisory Executive Board, which ended June
4.

According to a UNICEF spokesman, Christopher de Bono, the plan won't be
formally approved until the Board's next meeting, probably in September.

The Burmese bomb-making program was allegedly developed with help from
nearby North Korea — whose own nuclear weapons program became enmeshed in
scandals involving U.N. aid programs.

Just three years ago, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) closed
its offices in North Korea amid allegations — later confirmed by an
"independent investigative review panel" — that it had handed over hard
currency and sensitive equipment to the bellicose Kim Jong Il regime while
it was successfully circumventing international sanctions sparked by its
own nuclear weapons program.

The UNDP office in North Korea is in the process of reopening, after
making changes in its procedures.

In the case of Burma, a dissident organization known as the Democratic
Voice of Burma late last month released a documentary summarizing what it
called a five-year investigation of the military regime's clandestine
nuclear quest. It included claims by an alleged defector from the nuclear
program who says the regime wants "nuclear warheads."

When Fox News asked the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s
nuclear watchdog, for comment, IAEA spokesperson Gill Tudor replied: "The
Agency has seen the media reports and continues its analysis of
information on, as it does with information on other countries."

The UNICEF program aims to support infant vaccinations and feeding
supplements, bolster clinical care for children and expectant mothers,
expand water and sanitation networks (especially in schools), fight the
spread of AIDS and bolster early childhood education. The programs also
include hefty amounts for "communication activities promoting and engaging
child participation" and awareness of childrens' rights, plus extensive
funding to help the Burmese regime collect social and health data.

As is common with U.N. agency in-country plans, the execution of the plans
will largely be in the hands of the government and its various branches.
The current UNICEF in-country staff of 220 international and local
personnel would be expanded to support and monitor the programs through 10
field offices, but the bulk of the work would be carried out by government
doctors, educators and other officials.

"I have been worried about Myanmar for years," says John Bolton, former
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, and a longtime
critic of how — and how much — the U.N. spends. "UNICEF needs to be
clearer about its obligation not to be manipulated by governments for
their own ends." (Bolton is also a Fox News contributor.)

When it comes to monitoring whether the programs actually are implemented
as planned, however, UNICEF sounds confident of its abilities. A spokesman
says that official permission is required to monitor "certain parts of the
country," but he adds that "we have no recent experience of permission
being denied."

Hundreds of millions of dollars of other U.N. program aid also hangs in
the balance in Burma and the issue of monitoring what the government does
with the money has been very much at issue in the immediate past.

Case in point: some $320 million in aid from the Global Fund to Fight
Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis (GFAMT), a public-private venture based in
Switzerland that gets funding from Bill and Melinda Gates and from a
variety of governments — including the U.S., which kicks in 28 percent of
the Fund's budget.

The applicant for the five-year Global Fund grants is a "country
coordinating mechanism" in Burma that includes, along with representatives
of the regime's health services, representatives of the U.N. World Health
Organization (WHO), UNDP, the U.N. Joint Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), as
well as the British government's foreign development agency.

The recipient, if the grants get their final sign-off, is another U.N.
agency, the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which
according to its website provides "technical and administrative support"
to other U.N. agencies.

But "none of these grants are signed yet," says Global Fund spokesman Jon
Liden, because the Fund got badly burned once before by the Burmese
government — precisely on the issue of monitoring what was going on with
Fund money.

In July 2005, just months after the Global Fund had spent nearly $10
million of anti-AIDS, anti-malaria and anti-TB funding worth $98.4 million
over five years, the Fund abruptly bailed on the program.

It charged the Burmese regime with reneging on its written agreements to
allow Global Fund staff, U.N. personnel and non-government organizations
unimpeded access to areas where programs were supposedly underway.

The government also put new barriers in the way of Global Fund review of
supply procurement for the programs, meaning the Fund could no longer be
sure the government was buying what it said it was buying in the way of
medicines, among other things.

After the Fund left, the programs went ahead anyway, thanks to support
from yet another outside donor known as the Three Diseases Fund, which was
created in 2006 by, among others, the governments of Australia, Britain,
the Netherlands, and Sweden, plus the European Commission. UNOPS managed
the fund.

But in November 2009, Burma and the U.N. organizations working there came
back to the Global Fund for more. Whether they will get it is still
unclear.

At the time, says Lidon, "The Global Fund reiterated that none of our
procedures or requirements had changed and that they would not in any way
be relaxed" if Burma reapplied. Grant negotiations, he added, "are
ongoing."

That by no means exhausts the amount and variety of U.N. agency activity
in Burma. UNOPS, for example, also manages another $100 million fund known
as LIFT — Livelihoods and Food Security Trust — provided by European
donors.

For its part, UNDP in January extended its separate, three-year "Human
Development Initiative" in Burma by an extra year, meaning it will have
spent another $65 million by the end of 2011. The organization currently
aims to present a successor program to its executive board in either June
or September of next year. According to a UNDP spokesman, "The details and
budget estimate will be developed over the coming months."

A lot has happened in Burma since the Global Fund last cut off its medical
grants in 2005, including Cyclone Nargis, the horrific typhoon that
devastated the country in 2008 and left at least 138,000 dead.

In response to that disaster, the world sent hundreds of millions in aid
to the stricken country via the U.N. and other institutions, without much
thought for what other uses the regime might have for the money.

The official recovery from the Nargis calamity is supposed to end this year.

Now, with the alleged help of the dangerously unstable North Korean
regime, a different kind of catastrophic threat might be in the offing.

And how the U.N. — and the Burma regime — accounts for its money might
have everything to do with the outcome.

George Russell is executive editor of Fox News.