Arakan News Agency
A senior Myanmar official on last Monday called for democracy in the country to be “a chance to stay” amid international outrage over a military campaign against the Rohingya Muslims described by the United Nations as ethnic cleansing.
Some 507,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh since August 25th.
National Security Adviser Thong Tun told Reuters he spoke with his US counterpart HR McMaster by telephone and visited members of the US Congress in Washington last week. The issue of sanctions was not specifically addressed.
The United States last week called on countries to stop supplying the Myanmar army with weapons, but not to the point of threatening to re-impose US sanctions suspended during the previous administration of President Barack Obama.
“We need to ensure that democracy in Myanmar has a chance to stay,” Tun said in an interview with Reuters at the United Nations. It is a fledgling democracy. “The Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been in office for only 18 months.
Suu Kyi took power in the wake of a sweeping election victory after former military commanders began a political transition. For years, the United States and others have imposed sanctions on Myanmar in support of the Suu Kyi Democracy Campaign.
“We have many challenges ahead and these challenges can not be overcome within a day. Rome was not built in a day. So we can not erase 50 years of challenges, “he said, adding that he hoped to meet personally with McMaster, National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, to brief him on the current situation.
