Burma faced growing pressure from its Southeast Asian neighbours to free Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and speed up democratic reforms amid increasing frustration with the military junta.
The foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also agreed to set up a regional human rights commission despite fierce resistance from Burma, whose record has been a constant problem for the regional group.
The ASEAN foreign ministers said they expressed concern at their annual meeting Monday to Burma about its slow pace of change and urged it to show tangible progress that would lead to a peaceful transition to democracy in the near future
"We want to see Myanmar (Burma) not isolated. We continue to engage even though there are difficulties. We know that some people will get very impatient with Myanmar. We also get impatient with it, but Myanmar with us is better than Myanmar isolated", Syed Hamid said.
Syed says the group had given Burma a timeline for improvement, but did not provide details. ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
(Source: APTN)
