French FM meets Myanmar regime

France’s foreign minister Alain Juppe held talks with Myanmar’s rulers yesterday during a visit to assess the regime’s reformist credentials as Western powers weigh a possible relaxation of sanctions.
“Like the rest of the international community, we have observed with a lot of attention the positive signs given by President Thein Sein,” Juppe had said on Sunday after talks with Suu Kyi, pledging that France and the EU would respond “positively and in concrete terms to these significant gestures.”
During his talks with President Thein Sein in the capital Naypyidaw, the French minister was expected to press the government to ensure parliamentary by-elections due to be held on April 1 are “free and fair”, after a general election in November 2010 was marred by complaints of fraud.
Juppe was also scheduled to meet his counterpart Wunna Maung Lwin and other senior officials during a day of closed-door talks.
In a move hailed by the West, Myanmar on Friday released about 300 political prisoners, including several prominent dissidents, a day after signing a ceasefire with a major armed ethnic minority group.
“We hope that these new developments will reinforce the process of democratisation and national reconciliation,” Suu Kyi said after her talks with Juppe.
But the acclaimed dissident said it was unclear whether the military was fully behind the changes.
“Certainly there is always a theoretical, and perhaps not so theoretical, danger of an army coup by those who do not approve of the process of democratisation,” she said. “We hope very much that we will not come to that.”