ASEAN Foreign Ministers to Hold Meeting to Discuss Myanmar Crisis

Southeast Asian foreign ministers will hold a special meeting on Tuesday on the political crisis in Myanmar, the Indonesian foreign ministry said, as the regional and international community condemned a deadly weekend crackdown against pro-democracy protesters.

The online meeting was scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Jakarta time (8 a.m. GMT) and would be hosted by Brunei, this year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said on Monday.

“We are making preparations for the meeting,” Faizasyah told BenarNews.

Indonesia and Malaysia were the first ASEAN nations to call for such a meeting on the Myanmar military’s ouster of the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb 1.

“A special ASEAN foreign ministers meeting will be convened via video conference tomorrow and where we will listen to the representative of the Myanmar military authorities,” Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said in parliament on Monday, according to a transcript of his remarks on the foreign ministry website.

Keep reading

Ronna Nirmala