Not on best of terms
Source : Bangkok Post (Inside Politics)
There could be a serious breakdown in relations between our top brass and their counterparts in Burma, or it could just be a case of no-talkies. *** A pruning of a vine here, a plucking of a big bird there-life is sweet for the man who has everything except a political party to lord it over. *** Foot in mouth disease continues to claim victims among those who do probably know better.
Drug problems and border conflicts have soured relations between Thailand and Burma to the point where things are getting personal between the military leaders.
Relations have been decidedly cool for some time, with the military chiefs no longer paying frequent visits on each other.
With millions of methamphetamine pills flooding into Thailand from across the Burmese border, the situation has become rather tense of late. The Thai military feels, quite rightly, that its Burmese colleague is doing nothing to help stem the drug flow. It also suspects that the opposite is true, that Burmese troops are involved directly in the drug trafficking process.
Intelligence sources said that at a recent meeting of senior Burmese military leaders in Rangoon, Gen Maung Aye, the Burmese army chief, denounced three Thai generals as "power-mad warmongers". The three are Gen Mongkol Ampornpisit, the former supreme commander, Gen Surayud Chulanont, the serving army chief, and Lt-Gen Wattanachai Chaimuenwong, the third army region commander.
Gen Mongkol did not visit Burma while supreme commander and criticised it for supporting the United Wa State Army, the major producer of methamphetamines across our northern border.
Gen Surayud, as soon as he took over the post of army commander, reversed the practice of Gen Chettha Thanajaro, his predecessor, of cultivating personal contacts with the Rangoon junta and handed over the matter to the proper authority--the Foreign Ministry.
The Burmese brass do not like Lt-Gen Wattanachai much because he stands firm against them and retaliates against any military action or stray artillery fire. He was supposed to have hit out at the Burmese at one meeting for being insincere and never meaning what they say.
In the past few months, this line of thought has been passed along unofficially among the Burmese military establishment by word of mouth as well as through military radio communications.
The Burmese postponed indefinitely a regional border committee meeting which they were to host in Keng Tung, Shan State, on April 25, 1999. There is still no sign the meeting will be rescheduled.
Gen Sampao Chusri, the new supreme commander, is to lead a 40-strong delegation to Burma from Dec 12-13. Though the trip is meant to introduce the new Thai commanders to the Burmese, the supreme commander is sure to bring up joint drug suppression efforts even though the Burmese always say they have no control over UWSA territory.
Though the delegation will include the new air force and navy chiefs, Gen Surayud will not go along because, as he himself said, he is not a new army commander. Gen Maung Aye did not attend the first meeting of the Asean army chiefs hosted by Gen Surayud in Cha-am last month.
So relations are not likely to get any warmer any time soon.