US embassy cable - 02RANGOON1517

S E C R E T RANGOON 001517 
 
SIPDIS 
 
CINCPAC FOR FPA 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/25/2012 
TAGS: PREL, ETRD, BM, IZ 
SUBJECT: BURMA AND IRAQ 
 
 
Classified By: COM CARMEN M. MARTINEZ; REASON 1.5(D). 
 
1.  (S) Summary:  An official Burmese delegation headed by 
the Minister of Forestry traveled to Baghdad in March and 
concluded agreements to cooperate with the Government of Iraq 
on trade, banking and finance, oil and gas, scientific 
research and technical issues, and in other areas.  The 
agreed minutes of the Burma-Iraq meetings, marked "Secret" by 
the GOB, were presented to the Government of Burma in October 
and obtained by Post in November.  A copy will be pouched to 
EAP/BCLTV.  End Summary. 
 
2. (S) The 4-6 March 2002 Baghdad meetings were an outgrowth 
of the "Agreement on Trade, Economic, Scientific and 
Technical Cooperation between the Government of the Union of 
Myanmar and the Government of the Republic of Iraq" signed on 
6 August 2001 in Baghdad, according to this document. 
 
-- The seven-person Burmese delegation was lead by Aung 
Phone, Minister of Forestry, and included the deputy minister 
of energy, the Burmese ambassador to Egypt, and the managing 
director of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, a large 
state-owned conglomerate. 
 
--  The 23-member Iraqi side was led by the Minister of 
Planning, Dr. Hassan Al-Khattab.  The Burmese delegation was 
also "received by" Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadhan, 
Deputy Prime Minister Hekmat Al-Azawi and the ministers of 
finance, trade, oil, and agriculture. 
 
3. (S) The vague and wide-ranging agreement included pledges 
to cooperate in such benign fields as honeybee breeding and 
garbage disposal systems.  The counter-trade proposal 
suggested Burmese agricultural and other products be traded 
for Iraqi "fertilizers, bitumen, and sulfer" (sic).  The two 
sides pledged to exchange "scientific and technical 
information between specialized scientific research 
institutions in both countries in the fields of irrigation 
and water resources management."  The minutes end with an 
agreement to hold a second session of the Joint Committee in 
Rangoon in March 2003. 
 
4. (S) We note that the two dictatorships also agreed to 
draft a bilateral agreement "concerning National News 
Agencies, TV Broadcasting organizations" and to an "exchange 
of training courses, on a reciprocal basis in the field of 
media and information." 
 
5.  (S) Comment:  The Burma-Iraq trade reported by other 
channels may be an outgrowth of the 2001 agreement and/or 
this March 2002 session of the Burma-Iraq Joint Committee. 
The agreed minutes of this meeting contain no individual 
elements that are particularly worrying in themselves.  The 
document clearly portrays the relationship between Iraq and 
Burma as cordial and cooperative, with a pledge "to further 
enhance relations between the two countries in all fields." 
 
Martinez