Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-nukara said he expects the delivery of humanitarian assistance to displaced people inside Myanmar to begin by the first week of March with the border area in Tak province to be used as the staging point.

Speaking to Thai PBS World in a recent interview, Parnpree said efforts will be made to ensure that the humanitarian assistance will be given out without discrimination to people of all groups affected by the ongoing fighting in various parts of the country.

The delivery of the assistance, which initially will comprise food and medical supplies, will be overseen by the Red Cross Society of Thailand and Myanmar, he said.

He said the State Administration Council, the official name of the military government in Myanmar, fully supports the plan while talks are underway with the various armed ethnic groups and the National Unity Government (NUG).

Acknowledging concerns over the accountability and transparency of the aid delivery, the foreign minister said the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA) will play the monitoring role to ensure that it reaches all intended groups of people.

Parnpree said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is welcomed to play a role in the assistance initiative at a later stage.  “There might be a perception that ICRC represents western countries.  So, we want to make sure that for the start, every party feels comfortable without suspecting whether such assistance would favour any particular groups,” Parnpree said.

Parnpree insisted that the humanitarian aid plan is not solely Thailand’s endeavor but it will be a joint effort of ASEAN as it is part of the five-point consensus adopted by the regional grouping to help resolve the three-year-old conflict in Myanmar. He said it was given full support by the ASEAN foreign ministers at their retreat in Luang Prabang late last month.

Parnpree, who met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit to Washington DC early this month, said the US, the European Union and China have also expressed support for the Thai initiative.

Parnpree said he first raised the humanitarian assistance initiative with Myanmar Foreign Minister U Than Swe during a meeting in December in China where they were attending a regional cooperation forum.  It was followed by a visit to Bangkok by a team of Myanmar officials to discuss how it would be implemented.

Parnpree said the visit by the Myanmar officials was not made public to avoid causing possible misinterpretation.

While endorsing the initiative, Parnpree said the Myanmar side objected to the use of the term corridor, which was originally favoured by the Thai government, and wanted it to be referred to only as assistance.

The foreign minister also sees the humanitarian assistance as the potential first step toward achieving ASEAN’s five-point consensus to help resolve the crisis in Myanmar.

“Hopefully, the humanitarian assistance initiative, if successfully carried out, should help bring about trust among the conflicting parties to the point that they will be willing to sit down for a diaglogue,” he said.

Parnpree confirmed that the border area in Tak which he visited early this month will be used as a staging point for the humanitarian assistance.

“We will start with a small area, kind of a pilot project, to see how it goes. Most important is that we want to make sure that the aid will reach all the intended groups of people,” he said, acknowledging concerns as to how the aid items would be handled once they are inside Myanmar territory.

By Thepchai Yong