WEB DESK
China’s foreign minister Wang Yi on Sunday urged Myanmar’s junta to hold talks with its opponents. Wang Yi is on first visit to the country since the 2021 coup that plunged it into turmoil.
Beijing is one of the Myanmar military’s few international allies, supplying arms and refusing to label the power grab that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government as a coup.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China expects all parties in Myanmar to “adhere to rational consultation” and “strive to achieve political reconciliation.”
Wang also told counterpart Wunna Maung Lwin that “China sincerely hopes that Myanmar will be politically and socially stable,” according to a statement on the foreign ministry’s website.
In Beijing’s highest profile visit to Myanmar since the putsch, Wang is attending a foreign ministers’ meeting with representatives from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam attending.
His comments follow a junta spokesman indicating last week that talks between the military and ousted leader Suu Kyi to resolve the chaos were “not impossible.”
Myanmar’s spiraling civil violence has sparked concern from its neighbors, with a regional envoy visiting to try to kick-start talks between the army and its opponents.