Thai PM to Meet Suu Kyi

Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra (left) shakes hands with Burma's President Thein Sein on her first trip to Burma in October.

Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra will meet Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday in Rangoon, becoming the first Thai premier to meet the Burmese opposition leader.

Win Htein, a prominent member of Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), told The Irrawaddy on Monday that the Nobel Peace prize laureate has an appointment to meet with the Thai prime minister on Tuesday evening.

Yingluck is scheduled to travel to Burma’s capital Naypyidaw on Monday for a Greater Mekong Subregion summit before heading to Rangoon. It will be her second trip to Burma since she was sworn in.

Yingluck’s first visit to Burma was in early October when she met with President Thein Sein in Naypyidaw, but didn’t meet Suu Kyi at that time.

Suu Kyi earlier congratulated Yingluck on becoming Thailand’s first female prime minister after her Pheu Thai Party won a sweeping election victory on July 3. Suu Kyi called on her to support Burma issues and help Burmese refugees who are currently staying in Thailand.

Suu Kyi requested that Yingluck’s new government show mercy to the Burmese refugees who have fled their homes to Thailand due to decades of armed conflict.

Meanwhile, the Bangkok Post reported on Monday that the Thai government will use the occasion of Yingluck’s visit to Burma to hold a separate meeting with Burmese officials and investors to negotiate transport and energy development projects.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, a political science lecturer at Chulalongkorn University, told the Bangkok Postthat he was concerned with the Yingluck government's plan to open transport and energy talks with Burma as he feared Thaksin's cronies—rather than the public—would reap benefits from the projects.

The newspaper highlighted that when Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, was prime minister between 2001 and 2004, the government took a special interest in investing in transport, energy and telecommunications development in Burma.

Thailand plans to buy natural gas and to invest in construction of a transport system linking Dawei industrial complex in southern Burma with the west of Thailand. Critics said that the gas pipeline project was an example of a mega-project that had caused huge impacts on the environment, and on the frequency of human rights abuses due to armed conflict with ethnic minorities.

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