MANILA, July 23 (Reuters) – The participation of Myanmar leaders in top meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is “still far off”, the Philippines’ foreign minister said on Thursday.
• Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war, may not return yet as its compliance with ASEAN’s peace initiative, known as the “five-point consensus”, was still being assessed, Maria Theresa Lazaro told a press conference after an ASEAN meeting.
• “It’s still far off,” said Lazaro, who is also ASEAN’s special envoy on Myanmar. “There have been a lot of questions on their compliance.”
• Lazaro, who will lead a humanitarian mission there later in the year, said it was not certain if she would be granted access to detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was toppled from power in a 2021 military coup.
• The bloc will come up with benchmarks to measure progress on the peace roadmap and failure to meet those would constitute non-compliance, she added.
• Myanmar’s former top general Min Aung Hlaing, now its president, agreed to the plan with ASEAN in April 2021, two months after he launched the coup that plunged the country into turmoil.
• ASEAN later barred Myanmar’s leadership from its top meetings for failure to implement the roadmap, which calls for dialogue, cessation of hostilities and humanitarian access.
• Myanmar’s pro-military parliament recently passed a motion rejecting the five-point consensus, calling it interference.
(Reporting by Mikhail Flores; Editing by Martin Petty)
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