Wang Yi in Myanmar, meets counterparts from five countries

Bagan (TIP): In a move of interest to India, the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met counterparts from five countries in the central Myanmar city of Bagan. In a way, the meeting flouts the unwritten consensus of keeping Myanmar’s leaders at an arm’s length after its military junta failed to implement the peace proposals outlined by ASEAN. Wang met his counterparts from Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam in a meeting of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation group. Most of the countries at the meeting, like India, would prefer to engage the Myanmar junta having accepted it as an existential reality in that country’s power structure. India has security concerns with respect to Myanmar, directly from the border across where Naga rebels are believed to have regrouped and via Bangladesh which hosts 12 lakh refugees driven out by a military operation five years back. Most of these Rohingya refugees were victims of army operations in Rakhine state, where India is building a waterway-cum-road to Mizoram, which will be the landlocked state’s first outlet to the sea. New Delhi believes China can play a major role in persuading Myanmar to take back the refugees as well as usher peace in Rakhine state. (PTI)