No progress in ending Myanmar's deadly civil strife: ASEAN leader

Indonesian President Joko Widodo acknowledges to fellow Southeast Asian leaders that no progress has been made to end the civil strife gripping Myanmar

Indonesian President Joko Widodo somberly acknowledged to fellow Southeast Asian leaders on May 11 that no progress has been made to end the civil strife gripping Myanmar and renewed a call for an end to the violence, including a recent airstrike a rights group called an “apparent war crime."

“I have to be honest,” Mr. Widodo told fellow leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on the final day of their two-day summit in the Indonesian harbor town of Labuan Bajo. “There has been no significant progress in the implementation of the five-point consensus.”

ASEAN's chairperson this year, Mr. Widodo was referring to a peace plan forged by the 10-nation bloc with Myanmar’s top general in 2021 that called for an immediate end to the violence and dialogue among contending parties to be brokered through an ASEAN special envoy.

Myanmar's military-led government refused to take steps to enforce the plan, prompting ASEAN leaders to exclude the country’s ruling generals and their appointees from the bloc’s summit meetings. The generals have protested ASEAN’s move, which they said strayed from the group’s bedrock policy of non-intervention in each other’s domestic affairs and deciding by consensus.

Mr. Widodo called for unity — a seemingly futile call as he spoke with fellow heads of state in a bayside hotel conference room with the chair reserved for Myanmar’s leader empty.

After the leaders concluded their summit, Mr. Widodo and his Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, told a news conference that the bloc would continue to push for the peace plan's enforcement and expand ASEAN's engagement not just with military leaders but with various groups in Myanmar, hoping the military-led government would do the same.

“We will try again and again,” Mr. Marsudi told reporters. “We are still united and strong in seeing the urgency of the five-point consensus.”