John Kerry and Aung San Suu Kyi: A Milestone Meeting, Tempered by Questions
NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar — Less than two months after a civilian government took many of the levers of power in Myanmar for the first time in a half century, Secretary of State John Kerry conducted a seemingly routine diplomatic meeting on Sunday with the most improbable Burmese counterpart: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident who now sits atop a government that had long kept her under house arrest.
Their discussion focused on Myanmar’s brutal treatment of a Muslim minority group — at a moment when outsiders are questioning whether Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a hero of the human rights movement, has a double standard — and on the delicate question of whether Myanmar’s military leaders once had a program in place to build a nuclear weapon.
Yet Mr. Kerry seemed struck by the very idea that he was having the conversation at all.
He recalled visiting Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi at her lakeside home in Yangon, when it was still the capital of what was then called Burma, and sparring with members of the junta. They “assured me that there were no political prisoners” in the country, he said, and “tried to tell me that the people of Myanmar prized order more than they prized democratic rights.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/world/asia/john-kerry-myanmar-aung-san-suu-kyi.html?_r=0
