A PLAN TO FREE BURMA

IT'S BECOME commonplace in foreign capitals to pronounce that
democracy can never be imposed by force.

It's also frequently stated that unilateral diplomacy and sanctions are doomed.

Now comes a proposal to encourage democracy in a country suffering
under a dictatorial yoke and to use only peaceful, multilateral
diplomacy to do so. It's difficult to imagine how any of those
foreign capitals could object.

The proposal originates with two of the most respected apostles of
nonviolence, former Czech president Vaclav Havel (who helped manage
the peaceful transition from communism) and South Africa's retired
archbishop Desmond Tutu (who helped bring about the equally
miraculous peaceful transition from apartheid). The country in
question is Burma, now called Myanmar by its dictators.

The proposal is that the U.N. Security Council pay attention to
Burma's plight and instruct Secretary General Kofi Annan to negotiate
with Burma's leaders for a freeing of political prisoners and a
restoration of democracy.

Why the United Nations? A 125-page report commissioned by Mr. Havel
and Archbishop Tutu, and prepared by the Washington law firm DLA
Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, makes the case that Burma's plight, while
most acute for its 50 million people, is no longer simply an internal
matter for Burma to solve.

It's a case that the Bush administration itself has made, as when
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Burma "an outpost of
tyranny." The war that Burma's generals have waged on their own
citizens -- featuring ethnic cleansing, rape used as a weapon of war,
and enslavement of civilians to perform dangerous work -- is as
vicious as the fighting that seized the world's (and the United
Nations') attention in Sierra Leone; the difference is that Burma
keeps CNN's cameras away. The same war has forced some 700,000
refugees into neighboring countries.

The dictators' corrupt tolerance of heroin production has made Burma
a leading source of illegal drugs.

In other words, Burma features many of the emergency factors that
prompted the Security Council to intervene in Sierra Leone,
Afghanistan, Haiti, Liberia and elsewhere.

And unlike some of those countries, it also features an obvious and
legitimate alternative source of governance: Aung San Suu Kyi and her
National League for Democracy, which overwhelmingly won a
parliamentary election in 1990 but has been barred from ruling ever since.

Although Aung San Suu Kyi (like Archbishop Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize
recipient) remains under house arrest, and many in her party are
imprisoned, the league nonetheless had the courage to endorse the
call for Security Council action. Yet so far, a number of governments
that should find the choice far easier, including traditional friends
of Burma's democrats such as Britain, have been reticent, and the
Bush administration, while supporting the initiative, has been less
than forceful.

A humanitarian and human rights catastrophe; a threat to neighboring
countries; a proposed peaceful and multilateral response.

What objection could there be?