US weighing new sanctions on Myanmar

The United States is exploring additional actions against the ruling military junta in Myanmar, as the situation continues to deteriorate, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday.

He said Southeast Asian leaders had been invited to hold talks at a summit with President Joe Biden.

Blinken made the comments during a trip to Malaysia, where Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said the summit invitation would be discussed when counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meet on January 19.

"We very much look forward to having a special summit with Asean next year," said Blinken, who described the 10-member bloc as "essential to the architecture of the Indo-Pacific region".

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew a civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, prompting protests and pockets of armed resistance met with violent suppression.

Asean has been leading diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis but some of the bloc's members have expressed frustration about slow progress, leading to Myanmar's military leader being excluded from a recent meeting of the bloc.

"It's important in the weeks and months ahead to look at what additional steps and measures we can take individually and collectively to pressure the regime, to put the country back on a democratic trajectory," Blinken said. The United States and other Western countries have imposed sanctions on Myanmar's leadership, the military and businesses, and last week brought in new measures.

Blinken said the United States continued to "look actively" at whether actions taken in Myanmar might constitute genocide.

More than 730,000 minority Rohingya Muslims fled Myanmar's Rakhine state in August 2017 after a military crackdown that refugees said included mass killings and rape.

Blinken's predecessor, Mike Pompeo, was urged by US officials to formally declare that campaign as genocide, but opted not to, despite years of investigation and analysis, according to a Reuters investigation earlier this year.