McCain, Lantos draft Burma-crackdown legislation

The outpouring of support for Burma’s pro-democracy protests is poised for a congressional full-court press this month, including new legislation from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

{mosads}As partisanship on the Hill grows ever sharper, few issues inspire the depth of solidarity as has the cause of Buddhist monks who have led thousands of dissidents in demonstrations against Burma’s repressive regime. The built-in accord could make room on this fall’s crowded floor schedule for tightening current U.S. sanctions on the isolated nation.

“Usually it’s very hard to pass stand-alone legislation, but on Burma there is such strong bipartisan support that I could see a package getting enough consensus that it wouldn’t need to be attached to an appropriations bill,” the Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, said.

Lantos and McCain are preparing to offer separate bills, likely this week, aimed at closing loopholes in existing Burmese import bans, according to their offices. Lantos leads the House’s annual sanctions push against Burma, while McCain — who said on the trail this weekend that the Burmese monks, not former Vice President Al Gore, should have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize — called for a multilateral arms embargo after scores of peaceful protesters were arrested, beaten and fired upon by the regime soldiers.

“The danger is that this will slide into the background now that the images of monks being shot and taken away are off the media headlines,” said Michael Green, a former senior Asia director at the National Security Council now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “[Congress is] not going to let this one go, and more power to them.”

The Bush administration announced financial sanctions targeting 14 senior members of Burma’s ruling military last month, earning kudos from Congress as well as calls from McCain and others to go further still. Eight senators wrote to the leaders of the European Union on Friday urging them to join that effort. Among them were Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.), also in the White House hunt, and the upper chamber’s sanctions leaders, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

“Coordinated action by the United States and Europe would increase the likelihood that banks throughout the world will cooperate, and make it impossible for Burma to evade sanctions by conducting financial transactions in Euros,” the senators wrote.

The strongest push to close sanctions loopholes deals with precious gems and timber that are harvested in Burma and sold through a third country, enriching the regime in the process. The trade association Jewelers of America asked Congress to ban that practice last week, while Cartier and Bulgari barred sales of Burmese jewels.

Another loophole catching activists’ attention allows Chevron to maintain its investment in a Burmese natural-gas field that provides vital cash reserves for the ruling regime. Chevron defends its stake and contends that the project helps employ impoverished locals, but Human Rights Watch, EarthRights International and other groups are turning up the heat on the energy giant.

McCain’s bill would add new financial sanctions and increase aid to democracy activists in Burma, although how his and Lantos’s plans will approach sanctions loopholes remains to be seen. Chevron likely would lobby against any bill that would imperil its gas deal.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), one of several senators who attended a pre-recess meeting on Burma with the Chinese ambassador, said beefed-up U.S. sanctions inadvertently could encourage Asian neighbors to bolster their ties to the regime.

“Our focus ought to be on multilateral” sanctions, Kerry said. “If we just do our American business piece, and we’re all alone, it won’t have an impact. It will help, but it will be quickly replaced by Chinese companies or Indian companies.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), No. 2 in the Senate and chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s new human rights panel, said in a recent interview that he would support such attempts to tighten sanctions. Durbin expressed concern that Beijing is downplaying its ability to influence the Burmese junta.

“They diminished their power in the situation,” Durbin said. “They have more power than they’re acknowledging. We can’t allow this [situation in Burma] to descend any further.”

Jeremy Woodrum, director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, cast doubt on predictions that China and India could easily take over projects such as Chevron’s.

“There is a lot of Chinese investment but they’re nowhere near approaching the level of being able to replace U.S. and E.U. investment in the country,” Woodrum said.

Other efforts to press for democratic change in Burma have caught fire in the capital this month.

House members from both parties have begun linking Burma to their call for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, an effort once identified chiefly with protests against the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region. In addition, a new grassroots group co-founded by MoveOn.org and dubbed Avaaz.org has launched an ad campaign and multinational petition backing the protests.

Compared with the Darfur movement, Malinowski said, “Burma has fewer hot movie stars … but I think there are quite a few suffering places around the world that would envy the attention Burma is getting right now.”