PHNOM PENH: ASEAN Chair 2022 Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has instructed ASEAN to establish two mechanisms, including a mechanism to ensure an end to violence and to provide humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, to pave the way for negotiations in Myanmar and the 2023 elections in Myanmar.

Cambodian premier has suggested that a ceasefire mechanism should at least include the ASEAN chairmanship before the current ASEAN chairmanship, along with the ASEAN Secretary-General to coordinate the ceasefire in Myanmar in order to maintain security and welcome the ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar. Facilitate dialogue between all parties and reach the Myanmar elections in August 2023. He further added that after the mechanism to stop the violence, there will be more ASEAN humanitarian assistance mechanisms.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has said: "As long as the ceasefire is resolved, humanitarian aid will go everywhere, it will be guaranteed to go with it. In order to stop firing, we must have to converse to provide assistance, we must have dialogue! Some people say that I did not meet this person, meet that person, I did not set a goal to meet anyone at all! What I want is two things, the first is a ceasefire, the second is aid."

He thinks that ASEAN member partners will understand this issue to help find a solution for Myanmar, because leaving Myanmar further away from ASEAN will push the war to intensify and kill more people.

The prime minister has stressed that the Myanmar issue could not end with a joint statement on 7 January, but would have to wait until Myanmar's democratic elections, which the military will hold in August 2023.

Prime Minister Hun Sen travels to Myanmar to meet with military leader Min Aung Hlaing on 7 January, 2022, to help resolve the country's stalemate and bring Myanmar back to ASEAN too. During the meeting, Myanmar military leader Min Aung Hlaing Liang promised Prime Minister Hun Sen that the Myanmar military government will extend the ceasefire until the end of 2022, facilitate the process of receiving aid from ASEAN and facilitate the ASEAN special envoy to visit Myanmar with all parties to the conflict in the country, including ethnic armed groups.

^{PHOTO: EAC NEWS}