The Thai government has confirmed more details about the meetings that it will host this week on the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, at least one of which will be attended by a high-ranking official from the military junta.
Speaking to journalists yesterday, Thai Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nikorndej Balankura confirmed that Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa will host two separate regional meetings focusing on Myanmar on December 19 and 20, according to the Bangkok Post. The first meeting will be an informal consultation on border security and transnational crime, and will be attended by Myanmar’s junta-appointed Foreign Minister Than Swe, according to a spokesperson for the military regime. The meeting will also be attended by “ministers, deputy ministers, and officials” from China, Laos, Thailand, India and Bangladesh, the five nations that share borders with Myanmar,
“This meeting reflects Thailand’s leading role in promoting frank and open discussion with relevant countries on how to closely work together on shared concerns to achieve mutual benefits,” Nikorndej said.
This will be followed by a second meeting on December 20, details of which were announced by an Indonesian official earlier this month. This will be open to all “interested members” of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and “consultation will be preceded by an informal meeting of the current, previous and incoming ASEAN chairs,” Nikorndej said – that is, current chair Laos, past chair Indonesia, and next year’s chair, Malaysia. He added that the December 20 meeting will discuss the conflict in Myanmar more explicitly, including ASEAN’s stalled Five-Point Consensus peace plan.
The upcoming meeting reflects the Pheu Thai-led government’s attempts to play an elevated role in resolving the country’s conflict, after replacing the military-backed government last year. During the ASEAN Summit in Vientiane in October, Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said that Thailand was “ready to help” and offered to host informal meetings aimed at advancing and supporting ASEAN’s efforts to implement the Five-Point Consensus and resolve Myanmar’s various intersecting conflicts.
The ASEAN peace plan, which was formulated at an emergency meeting in Jakarta in April 2021, two months after the military coup, calls for an immediate cessation of violence in the country and inclusive dialogue involving “all parties” to the country’s conflict. Despite appointing a special envoy for the conflict in Myanmar in line with the consensus, ASEAN has made little progress in implementing its most substantive points.
Myanmar’s military junta has refused to heed the injunction to stop its attacks on resistance forces, which are now fighting back with increasing effectiveness; nor has it shown any willingness to engage with “all parties” involved in the civil war, instead seeking to eliminate them by force. Resistance groups are likewise disinclined to confer any legitimacy upon the ruling military council, describing it variously as “fascist” and “terroristic.”
Reuters reported that it was not clear if Myanmar will send any representatives to the second meeting, although ASEAN has blocked “political representatives” of the junta from attending its summits and other high-level meetings. The upcoming meeting will not take place under ASEAN’s aegis, so it is unclear whether this will apply. Leong Wai Kit of Channel News Asia has reported that the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) has not been invited to attend the talks, which at the very least suggests that the proceedings will take place within the bloc’s conservative boundaries. In other words, don’t expect any bold or unexpected initiatives. The fact that the December 19 meeting is billed obliquely as a meeting on “border security” and “transnational crime” also points to the veto that the junta is effectively able to exercise in order to secure its participation.
For this reason, the current meetings are unlikely to result in an immediate breakthrough. As I have noted on many occasions, the primary belligerents in Myanmar currently have no interest in peace talks, viewing the country’s civil war as an existential struggle for the country’s future. Even with the significant changes in 2024, which has seen resistance groups seize large swathes of territory along Myanmar’s borders with Bangladesh and China, it is hard to imagine either being willing to treat the other as a legitimate partner of peace.
In recent weeks, China has succeeded in forcing two major ethnic armed groups to the table, but Beijing has had to exert considerable pressure to do so, and it remains unclear whether it can exercise a similar influence beyond the regions directly adjacent to its own border. In any event, ASEAN member states including Thailand have shown no inclination to take this approach to bring about “inclusive political dialogue.” Such action is also anathema to the bloc as a whole, which hews to a conservative interpretation of “non-interference” in member states’ internal affairs.
The new Thai government’s position is undoubtedly more constructive than the approach taken by the military-backed government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, which appeared at times to treat the military junta as a “normal” government and did little to address the intensifying conflict across its border. But for the time being, the best it can hope for at present is to hold open a channel of communication for the time, if that time ever comes, that conditions inside Myanmar are more amenable to political negotiations.
