UNITED NATIONS negotiator Razali Ismail has won praise for his efforts to bring democracy to Myanmar. He also is being criticised over a business deal his firm was clinching with the military regime as he was in talks for the release from house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The former Malaysian ambassador was not doing anything unusual, observers said. The links between politics and business in Malaysia had become so entwined that such practices were common.
Malaysia experts interviewed by the South China Morning Post were split on whether Mr Razali, who has denied any conflict of interest, may have harmed the process of returning democracy to Myanmar. Pro-democracy activists and Western analysts - while stressing the details of the deal brokered by the Malaysian company Iris Technologies and the junta were not known - said such practices were wrong.
The Malaysian system has also been dragged into focus and activists said Mr Razali had highlighted an area needing reform.
The envoy, who travels to the United States with Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for a series of meetings next week, offered to resign from his part-time UN position as special envoy to Myanmar if the deal was found to be a conflict of interest. He acknowledged on Monday he was chairman and 30 per cent shareholder of Iris, which had a contract with Myanmar and all other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations before he took the UN post two years ago.
'The fact that my company is involved in discussions with the Myanmar Government is not a conflict of interest because I have not negotiated it myself,' he said.
Breaking the story on Monday, the same day Ms Suu Kyi was released from 19 months of house arrest, the International Herald Tribune reported the deal was struck 10 days before Ms Suu Kyi's release - shortly after Mr Razali's seventh trip to Yangon. Myanmar's media said Iris would provide an electronic 'smart card' passport system.
