Suu Kyi 'lacks moral leadership'

Veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar to advise on the Rohingya crisis, saying it was conducting a "whitewash" and accusing the country's leader Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking "moral leadership".

Richardson, a former Clinton administration cabinet member, quit as the 10-member advisory board was making its first visit to western Rakhine State, from where nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months.

"The main reason I am resigning is that this advisory board is a whitewash," Richardson told Reuters in an interview, adding he did not want to be part of "a cheerleading squad for the government".

One-time Suu Kyi ally Richardson was one of five foreign members handpicked by Myanmar's civilian leader to serve on the committee.

But after a three-day visit to Myanmar, Richardson struck out at his hosts, saying he could not in "good conscience" sit on a panel he feared would only "whitewash" the causes of the Rohingya crisis.

He tore into the Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi for an "absence of moral leadership" over Rakhine and described her "furious response" to his calls to free two Reuters journalists arrested while covering the crisis.

A Myanmar government spokesman hit back yesterday, accusing the former New Mexico Governor Richardson of overstepping the mark in his stinging resignation letter.

"He should review himself over his personal attack against our State Counsellor," government spokesman Zaw Htay told AFP, referring to Suu Kyi's official title.

"We understand his emotion about the two Reuters correspondents. However, he needs to understand, rather than blame the Myanmar nation and the State Counsellor."

Zaw Htay said the issue of the arrests was beyond Richardson's mandate and he should not have brought it up at his meeting with Suu Kyi.

The heated discussion left Myanmar's leader "quivering" with rage, Richardson told the New York Times.

"If she had been a little closer to me, she might have hit me, she was so furious," the paper quoted Richardson as saying.

The Reuters journalists, Myanmar nationals Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, face a possible 14 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly possessing classified documents that they say were given to them by two policemen.

They are waiting to hear whether they will be granted bail in a protracted case that could take months to even reach trial.

They had been reporting on the crisis in Rakhine, where Myanmar troops are accused of waging a vicious ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya.

Nearly 690,000 Rohingya have fled the brutal military operation for Bangladesh since last August, bringing with them consistent testimony of murder, rape and arson at the hands of troops and vigilante mobs.

Some 300 more families have crossed the border in recent days after several houses were burned down in Buthidaung township, said Chris Lewa from the Arakan Project, a monitoring group that closely tracks Rakhine.

Richardson also has harsh words for the head of the panel, former Thai deputy prime minister Surakiart Sathirathai.

The board chairman, he said, was not "genuinely committed" to implementing recommendations regarding the issues of Rohingya safety, citizenship, peace, stability and development.