Alex Je Bailey

WASHINGTON, Aug 26, 2009 (AFP) –
US Senator Jim Webb, back from a rare trip to Myanmar, called sanctions against the military regime "overwhelmingly counterproductive" and asked the opposition to consider taking part in upcoming elections.

Webb, whose against-the-grain views on Myanmar have infuriated some activists, voiced concern that Western isolation of Myanmar pushed it into the arms of China, "furthering a dangerous strategic imbalance in the region."

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Myanmar, earlier known as Burma, due to its refusal to recognize the last elections in 1990 and prolonged detention of the victor, democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

"While the political motivations behind this approach are laudable, the result has been overwhelmingly counterproductive," Webb wrote Wednesday in The New York Times.

"The ruling regime has become more entrenched and at the same time more isolated. The Burmese people have lost access to the outside world," said Webb, who on August 15 became the first US official to meet the junta's reclusive leader Than Shwe.

Webb said he opposed lifting sanctions due to US economic interests or "if such a decision were seen as a capitulation of our long-held position that Myanmar should abandon its repressive military system in favor of democratic rule.

"But it would be just as bad for us to fold our arms, turn our heads and pretend that by failing to do anything about the situation in Myanmar we are somehow helping to solve it," he said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Webb's views are "something we're going to be looking at" in a review of Myanmar policy initiated after President Barack Obama took office.

The Obama team has been skeptical about sanctions as a diplomatic tool and supports engagement with US foes, although the State Department earlier assured Aung San Suu Kyi supporters in Congress it was not looking to open trade with Myanmar.

Webb, a gruff Vietnam veteran and author who belongs to Obama's Democratic Party, said the United States could offer to help Myanmar carry out elections next year.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy has denounced the vote -- the first since the 1990 polls -- as a sham, particularly as the Nobel laureate remains under house arrest.

But Webb said the opposition party "might consider the advantages of participation as part of a longer-term political strategy."

"There is room for engagement" between the United States and Myanmar, Webb wrote. "Many Asian countries -- China among them -- do not even allow opposition parties."

Webb, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, won the freedom of a troubled American who had been jailed in Myanmar for swimming to Aung San Suu Kyi's home.

But Myanmar democracy activists have been livid. Pyinya Zawta, a prominent monk who lives in exile in the United States after being jailed for leading pro-democracy protests, said Webb is "despised by the people of Burma."

"Webb claims that the Burmese people would benefit from interaction with the outside world, as if we need to be condescendingly 'taught' by Americans about our rights and responsibilities," Zawta wrote in The Irrawaddy, a newsmagazine set up by Myanmar exiles in Thailand.

"Had Webb spent some time with real Burmese people apart from the military regime and others who share his views, he would better understand the sacrifice we made for democracy," he said.

Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think-tank, also faulted Webb on sanctions, saying that China and Southeast Asian nations provided a lifeline to Myanmar.

"It is demonstrably true that American sanctions have not brought about change in Burma," Lohman said.

"But the answer lies in building the necessary international consensus to pressure it, not abandoning the effort," he said.