Myanmar military ruler visits China, seeks support

By TINI TRANAP

BEIJING -Military-run Myanmar's top leader Gen. Than Shwe arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a state visit to his country's closest ally ahead of contentious national elections this fall.

China strongly backs Myanmar internationally and provides it with key economic and diplomatic support. Myanmar's ruling junta has been largely shunned by the West because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to the opposition party that won elections two decades ago.
Than Shwe is expected to seek China's support for plans to hold nationwide elections in early November that the junta is portraying as a key step in shifting to civilian rule after five decades of military domination. Critics have called them a sham and say the military shows little sign of relinquishing control.
Than Shwe will meet President Hu Jintao along with Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior Chinese officials in Beijing. He is scheduled to visit the Shanghai Expo and the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province before he departs Saturday.
Though no details have been released about their agenda, experts expect talks to center on the upcoming elections as well as economic deals signed by Wen earlier this year.
"He needs to talk to China about how to further develop their mutual relations if he wins the election, and how China and Myanmar can go further in cooperating politically and economically," said Zhao Haili, associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University.
The countries have generally enjoyed strong relations in recent years, though there was some friction when factional fighting sent tens of thousands of Burmese refugees across the Chinese border last summer.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference Tuesday that the election was Myanmar's internal affair. "We hope the international community can provide constructive help to the upcoming election and refrain from making any negative impact on the domestic political process and the regional peace and stability," she said.
Than Shwe's visit comes three months after Wen went to Myanmar, the first trip by a Chinese leader since 2001. Wen signed 15 agreements on cooperation in areas including a natural gas pipeline, hydropower station and development assistance, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
China is Myanmar's third-largest trading partner and investor after Thailand and Singapore. In 2009, bilateral trade totaled $2.9 billion, Xinhua said. By January 2010, China's investment in Myanmar amounted to $1.8 billion, accounting for 11.5 percent of Myanmar's then total foreign investment.
But this May, China made huge investments in hydropower, oil and gas, totaling $8.17 billion, Xinhua said, quoting Myanmar government statistics

ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံအာဏာရပါတီအုပ္စုမ်ား လံုျခံုေရးႏွင္ဆိုင္ေသာ အေျပာင္းအလဲ သေဘာတူညီမွ ုရရန္နီးစပ္ေန

Japan's Ruling Bloc Near Agreement On Major Security Shift

  | By By MARI YAMAGUCHI

Posted: 06/27/2014 7:24 am EDT Updated: 06/27/2014 11:59 am EDT

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TOKYO (AP) — Japan's ruling party and its coalition partner are near agreement on a major shift in the country's restrictive defensive policy that would allow the military to help defend other nations.

The planned change is part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to allow Japan to play a more assertive role in international security amid China's growing military presence and rising regional tensions.

On Friday, senior members of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and its partner New Komeito were finalizing the wording of a draft security policy submitted by the government. The Cabinet is expected on Tuesday to approve Japan's right to exercise "collective self-defense" by reinterpreting the war-renouncing Article 9 of Japan's Constitution — a step opponents say undermines the charter.

The two governing partners have been discussing the change based on a recommendation in May by an Abe-appointed panel of experts. After 10 rounds of talks, Abe's party has largely pressured its centrist, Buddhist-backed partner into a compromise, though New Komeito initially opposed the idea.

Abe wants to allow Japan to fight for other countries when Japan isn't under direct attack. He says no single country can defend itself anymore and that Japan needs to keep up with the increasingly harsh security environment in the region, citing China's rise and missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.

The near-final draft Friday says Japan can exercise the right to collective self-defense only when there is a need to safeguard the people's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when it is threatened by a foreign armed attack on Japan or "countries with close ties." It says the military measures should be "limited to the minimum amount necessary."

New Komeito leader Natsuo Yamaguchi welcomed the draft's limits on the use of collective defense.

Critics say the new policy leaves the door open for Japan's eventual participation in collective security activities such as the war in Iraq. Japan currently limits its participation even in U.N. peacekeeping activities to noncombat roles.

Written under U.S. direction after World War II, the 1947 constitution says the Japanese people "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation," and that "land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."

The interpretation of that ban has been relaxed over the years, allowing Japan to have a military to defend itself, dubbed a Self-Defense Force. A number of Japanese leaders have said in the past that the country has a right to collective self-defense but has chosen not to use it.

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