[아시아경제 조유진 기자] An international lobbyist employed by the Myanmar military unit argues that he wants to move away from China and improve relations with the United States and the West.
According to a major foreign press on the 6th (local time), Israeli-Canadian Ari Benmenashi said his company, Dickens & Madson Canada, was hired by the Myanmar military, hoping to improve relations with the United States and other countries.
He argued that the Myanmar military is willing to restore democracy and wants post-politics. He added that there is pressure inside the military to go to the United States instead of China, saying that the state adviser Aung San Suu Kyi, who is being arrested and detained by the military, has become too close to China from the perspective of the military generals.
He said, “(Military) does not want to be a puppet in China.”
Benmenashi is said to have a history of working as an international lobbyist for contracts with Zimbabwe’s dictator Robert Mugabe and Sudan’s military forces in the past.
He said that if the sanctions imposed on the military in Myanmar by the United States and other Western countries are withdrawn, they will be paid a fee. Myanmar’s military failed to withdraw the $1 billion of funds deposited in US banks shortly after seizing power in a coup earlier last month, and the funding line was blocked.
It also said that Myanmar’s military has been assigned a mission from the military to contact Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) regarding plans to send Rohingya refugees, a minority of Islamic ethnicity, to Arab countries.
Ben Menash also argued that the military is willing to restore democracy. He added that the military is in the best position to manage the return to democracy after the coup. “They want to get out of politics entirely, but there are procedures.”
There are also photos and videos of armed soldiers at the protest site, he argued, but it was the police, not the military, who were managing the protests.
Reporter Jo Yu-jin [email protected]