The Bush administration stepped up its confrontation with the ruling junta in Myanmar on Friday, and officials said they were searching for ways to persuade China and other nations to cut off lending, investment and trade into the country.
But in a sign of how limited Washington’s leverage is against the country, which has long been the target of U.S. sanctions, officials said they were concerned that China, a trading partner and neighbor of Myanmar, would block any significant effort to destabilize the government.
The Bush administration appears to regard the violent crackdown on monks as a long-hoped-for opportunity to get other Southeast Asian nations to rethink their insistence that they should not interfere with the internal politics of their neighbors. The hope is that U.S. pressure might force the leaders of the ruling junta into a political process that would drive them from power, if not from the country.
“What we are trying to do is speed their demise,” said one senior U.S. official. “The question is, do we have the diplomatic and economic influence to hit a bank shot here” by persuading Beijing, in particular, that its dealings with Myanmar could embarrass it as the 2008 Olympics approach.
Another senior official said the administration would try to persuade China to offer sanctuary to the leaders of the junta, in the hope this would encourage them to leave Myanmar. Other ideas include getting China and India to halt investment in new oil and gas projects and cutting off bank lending in places like Singapore to freeze Myanmar accounts.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal policy deliberations.
Many of the techniques are modeled on sanctions designed against North Korea. Officials were surprised at how quickly banks ceased dealing with that country as soon as they realized it could affect their access to the U.S. banking system.
“International institutions take our list seriously,” one of the officials said, referring to banks. The official added, “They quickly realize the downside of dealing with these people is greater than the upside.”
The government does face international criticism. The United Nations, under pressure from the Bush administration and European leaders, is sending a special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to Myanmar, which agreed to allow him to visit after China intervened, officials said.
On Friday, however, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed disappointment that the UN Security Council could not act more forcefully, largely because of opposition from China.
“I will say on Burma that given what is going on in the streets in Rangoon, I would have hope that the Security Council would have taken stronger action,” Rice said in New York, referring to the country and its former capital by their alternate names.
The Bush administration’s efforts have received praise from an unexpected quarter: human-rights advocates.
“To the extent the international community is not moving, it is not the fault of the United States,” said Jeremy Woodrum, a co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, an advocacy organization in Washington. He credited President Bush with forcing through statements critical of Myanmar’s leaders this week by the UN Security Council and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
One of the senior officials said that the administration was also considering the fate of the only major U.S. investment in Myanmar, a Chevron energy stake, which was grandfathered in when the Clinton administration imposed sanctions on the country in 1997. Chevron owns a share of a gas field and pipeline project that was initially acquired by Unocal.