US President Barack Obama will soon appoint the first US special envoy for Myanmar, officials said, signaling a renewed effort to pry open the nation after its much criticized political transition.
People involved in the process said Obama would name Derek Mitchell, a veteran policymaker on Asia who now serves at the Pentagon, as the coordinator for US efforts for the country formerly known as Burma.
A US official said on condition of anonymity that the administration would announce the nomination “very soon” and likely roll out Mitchell with an appearance before Congress, a hotbed of criticism of Myanmar.
After Obama took office in January 2009, his administration initiated a dialogue with the military leadership of Myanmar after concluding that Western efforts to isolate the military-led nation had been ineffective.
The US has voiced disappointment over developments in Myanmar, including an election in November widely denounced as a sham, but has said that it sees no alternative to dialogue with the regime at such a fluid time.
Kurt Campbell, the top US Department of State official for East Asia, had personally spearheaded the Obama administration’s efforts on Myanmar and traveled twice to the isolated country.
Congress approved a wide-ranging law on Myanmar in 2008 that tightened sanctions and created the special envoy position. Then-US president George W. Bush named Michael Green, formerly one of his top aides, but the nomination died in the Senate owing to an unrelated political dispute.
Green, now an academic at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Georgetown University, said Mitchell’s expected appointment would give momentum to Myanmar policy — provided that the administration gives him enough space to maneuver.
“Kurt Campbell wanted to make a serious run at this. He did as well as could be expected, but it yielded no positive change, so now they want to invest this with someone who has a full-time commitment,” Green said.
Myanmar’s ruling junta officially disbanded on Wednesday, giving the country a nominally civilian government for the first time in nearly a century, but many analysts called the move a masquerade, as top junta figures remain firmly in leadership positions, albeit without their uniforms.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion