Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Members of Burmese dictator Than Shwe’s entourage during a 2004 trip to New Delhi, told the Indian government that they “wondered whether they would have to ‘go nuclear’ to get US attention”, a November 2004 American diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks reveals.
The memo written by staff at the US embassy in Delhi quotes extensively from information relayed to the Americans from a senior Indian diplomat about Than Shwe’s October 2004 trip to the Indian capital. This is the latest of several leaked American cables released to mention Burma’s rumoured nuclear programme.
The diplomat, Dr. Mitra Vasisht, was assigned to the Southeast Asia section of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and told her American counterparts that Than Shwe was accompanied by the wives of two top generals Thura Shwe Man and Soe Win. The reclusive dictator’s trip came weeks after Than Shwe had orchestrated the arrest of his biggest rival in Burma’s ruling junta, Military Affairs Intelligence chief Khin Nyunt.
According to the cable, Vasisht suggested that the wives “may have been used as ‘hostages’ to ensure tranquility [sic] among the generals in Rangoon during Than Shwe’s absence”.
Vasisht also told her American colleagues that Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s “day has come and gone”, claiming that only engagement with the Burmese regime would work. Her unflattering comments about the then-detained Nobel Peace Prize winner, who only the year before had a narrowly avoided being killed by a junta-backed mob near the town of Depayin, will come as no surprise to Burma watchers in India.
The Indian government’s stance on Burma has shifted dramatically over the past two decades since 1988, when Delhi offered praise for those marching in the streets against the Ne Win regime during the August 8 popular uprising.
On Than Shwe’s most recent trip to India, an Indian cabinet minister presented the dictator, widely believed to have ordered his army’s 2007 violent crackdown on peacefully protesting monks, with a bust of Suu Kyi’s professed role model, Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi.
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