US moves to boost role in region

Phuket - Foreign ministers from the Lower Mekong region - Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam- will focus on economic development in their discussions with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tomorrow.

It was Clinton's initiative, boosting the US role in the region, to have talks on the sidelines of the Asean annual meeting in the resort island of Phuket.

The open-agenda meeting allows ministers to raise various issues of interest, said Laos Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith - mostly economic, infrastructure development, education, and public health.

"We want to make the meeting a working together between two major basins of the world - the Mekong and Mississippi," Thongloun said in an interview with The Nation.

Laos has no specific proposal for the opening meeting, except that it would be a good start for regular discussions with Washington on the sidelines of the Asean annual meetings, he said.

 "We have many partnership schemes among river basins in the region - such as the Ayeyawady-Chao-Phya - Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMEC) and Mekong-Ganga Cooperation. It would be good to have another for Mekong-Mississippi," he said.

Asked if the countries in the Mekong basin are setting the stage for the US to balance China's influence in the region, Thongloun said he did not take such political aspects into account. "We look at a positive side. It's good to have US initiative and constructive cooperation in the region," he said.

The Lao minister said eventually the meetings might accommodate all Mekong basin countries including Burma, which is under US sanctions over the suppression of opposition and human rights violations.

The United States will sign the Instruments of the Accession and Extension to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, a founding document for the Asean, to foster the US' role in the region.

On bilateral relations with the US, notably on Hmong migration, Thongloun said Washington has paid less attention to the issue since Thailand and Laos have been cooperating on refugee repatriation.

Thailand has sheltered 5,000 Hmong ethnic minorities from Laos since late 2004. Some claimed they worked with American CIA secret fighters against the Communist movement before the fall of Vientiane in 1975 - and the US had shown interest in taking some from Thailand for resettlement.

Last week representatives from the US Congress's Foreign Affairs Committee and the US Embassy in Vientiane visited a group of Hmong repatriated from Thailand's Ban Huay Nam Khao. The US officials expressed satisfaction with the state of the Hmong they'd seen in Laos, Thongloun said.

"American attention to the Hmong is concentrated on how to save them from human trafficking syndicates," he said.

Laos regarded the Hmong in Thailand as normal migrants, not asylum seekers. Thongloun said his government never suppressed the ethnic minorities, causing them to flee the country.

"I have never seen any official requests from the US to take any Hmong to resettle there," he said.