Brussels, 09/08/2004 (Agence Europe) - The Burmese prime minister, General Khin Nyunt, met with the Vietnamese prime minister, Phan Van Khai, on Monday. Vietnam is scheduled to host the EU-ASEM summit in Hanoi in October. The two leaders tried to move towards a compromise to enable the summit to actually take place (it was suspended because the EU opposes Burma's membership of ASEM, but ASEM countries refuse to agree to Burma's exclusion). The controversy has already led to the cancellation of two other meetings between the EU and Asia (see Europe of 14 July, p.8).
At the end of July, EU special envoy Hans van den Broek (former European Commissioner and former Dutch foreign minister) toured Asia to try to reach agreement, but was unable to convince ASEAN counties. The EU is linking the issue of Burma joining ASEM with the fate of opposition figure Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner and winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, seeing her liberation as a signal of the Rangoon's regime's desire to move towards democracy. One possible solution could involve the dissociation of Burma's attending of the Summit from its membership of ASEM, or seeing less high ranking officials from Burma attend the summit in Hanoi.