Aung San Suu Kyi stresses the importance of personal relations in address to diplomatic community

22 April 2016
Aung San Suu Kyi stresses the importance of personal relations in address to diplomatic community
Myanmar State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi meets with diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Naypyidaw on 22 April 2016. Photo: Min Min/Mizzima

In a speech to members of the foreign diplomatic community on April 22 in Nay Pyi Taw, Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi stressed friendship with Myanmar’s neighbours, plus told diplomats not to get too hung up on whether to call the country “Burma” or “Myanmar” in their dialogue.
 “As we all know, our country stands at the meeting point of South Asia and Southeast Asia, and with China in the north, we can claim to touch the Far East as well,” she said, noting the opportunities for peace and prosperity and how Myanmar or Burma has long stressed its neutrality since its independence in 1948. .
“I was a foreign service ‘brat’ as I spent several years with my mother when she was ambassador to India, and that way I learned much about what life means in the diplomatic community and how important personal relations are. Personal relations can lead to better relations between nations, and I am sure all of you here as seasoned diplomats are not only aware of this but are practicing this very, very enthusiastically in this country to create better relations between us and your country, between our people and your people, and between each other.
“We are not a very big or very powerful country but we hope we will be able to lead the world when it comes to approaching all the problems that beset our globe with sincerity, with goodwill towards all, and with a genuine desire to work hard to achieve the kind of situation of which all human beings dream, which we very seldom manage to achieve.
“It is always good to have goals, even if these goals seem unattainable, I think it is a basic necessity that we should aim high.
“We have a saying in Burmese, which means affectively that is you aim very, very high you may get to somewhere in the middle. You have to try very, very hard to get somewhere, anywhere. I don’t think you achieve anything for nothing.
“By the way, I think I should make very clear this business of Burma and Myanmar right here, because there are some members of the diplomatic corps who don’t quite know which term to use. So it is up to you, because there is nothing in the constitution that says you must use any term in particular.
“I use ‘Burma’ very often because I am used to using it. But it does not mean that I require other people to do that as well. And I will make an effort to say ‘Myanmar’ from time to time so we all feel comfortable.
“This is what diplomacy is all about. We have to learn to accommodate each other. We have to be aware of other people’s problems and we have to think as much about resolving other’s problem as resolving our own. A foreign policy that is based only on getting our own way is not much of a policy.
“We want to get our own way, of course, but we hope we can get our friends to help us get our own way willingly and out of friendship and out of conviction that what we are asking for is not unreasonable.
“We are trying to build our country as a strong nation, strong because of the strength of the people. We look upon our people as our greatest strength. Economic development, social development, it can come only if the people are actively involved in building up our nation. We cannot do it on our own. When I say ‘we’, the government cannot do it on our own without the cooperation of the people. We put great emphasis on people to people engagement. The best relationship between countries can be fostered only by the people of the country. But of course diplomats have much to do to make sure that our people get to know one another in the right way and learn to appreciate the differences. This is what diplomacy is about. It is about making differences come together to become a harmonious whole. I don’t want to say creating unity out of diversity, but creating harmony and interest out of diversity.
“We are starting out now, I would like to say, a new approach, not entirely new because we have always had a foreign policy to which we have adhered faithfully since the time of our independence. But of course there have been nuances in the past and we would like the present to be a time when we can be more open with our relationships with our neighbours and friends from the far corners of the earth.”