U.S. urged to bolster Myanmar curbs with diplomacy

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States can tighten the screws on Myanmar's junta through banking sanctions but resolving the crisis in the troubled Southeast Asian state will require deft U.S. regional diplomacy, analysts said on Monday.

Experts argue that sanctions pursued by the United States since the first bloody crackdown in the former Burma two decades ago -- as well as quiet engagement by Yangon's Southeast Asian neighbors and China and India -- have failed to ease repression that helped spark this year's protests.

The key is a mixture of sanctions to restrict junta resources and diplomacy to enlist powerful players like China, India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a process like the six-country North Korea nuclear talks.

"Because of the resources and strategic position that countries like China and India are trying to get in Burma, they have effectively canceled out the effectiveness of any sanctions by the West," said Michael Green of the Center For Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Green, a former senior Asia advisor at the U.S. National Security Council, said Washington will have to engage the Myanmar junta to help persuade countries to cooperate in the same way China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States have worked together on North Korea.

"You want it to be an Asian solution but the United States is really going to have to take the lead diplomatically to start pulling these countries together as we did with the six-party talks," he told reporters.

As part of efforts to lobby China, U.S. officials and lawmakers met China's Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong on Monday.

California Democrat Tom Lantos, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said he had applied for a visa to visit Myanmar. Lantos visited North Korea and Libya back when they were shunned by U.S. officials.

While seeking engagement, Lantos said he was "reviewing all the possible additional avenues of tightening sanctions."

Measures being studied included cutting off "exports of Burma that are basically laundered through other countries like Thailand and China," such as rubies, Lantos told Reuters.

"DARFURIZE THE ISSUE"

Pressure on Myanmar won't work without help from China, the junta's top arms supplier and commercial partner, which has used its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Yangon.

Jeremy Woodrum of the U.S. Campaign for Burma said a broader political solution in Myanmar required China's help, "but to cut off all international financial flows to the military regime, the United States does not need China."

Junta leaders "need to finance their imports and the United States, through its banking system, has the power to completely cut that off," he said. "I don't think any bank is going to choose access to Burma over access to the U.S. market."

Green, who was involved in U.S. efforts to target suspect North Korean bank accounts, said that might work with Myanmar.