Unocal Corp, condemned by human rights groups for investing in Burma, said on Wednesday the best way to promote democracy in the country was for firms like fast food giant McDonalds to join it there.
Unocal, the largest US investor in Burma, said last week it was expanding its petroleum business there at a time when many US companies have pulled out because of human rights abuses by the ruling military government.
In an interview in Washington, officials of the El Segundo, California-based company, described their involvement in the poor Asian state as a boon to the people that would pay dividends long after the military dictatorship was gone.
They cited contributions to malaria research, vaccinations for children, construction of roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and other public works projects in conjunction with partners.
We feel that the kinds of things were doing are so good that ... the right way to go about this is to have more and more American companies in there following this model, John Rafuse, head of the firms Washington office, said. Citing the failure of long-standing United States sanctions to dislodge governments in Cuba, Libya and Iraq, he said fostering western ideas through trade and investment was far more likely to bear fruit.
Somebody said the thing that would have taken (Cuban President Fidel) Castro out 25 years ago was putting a McDonalds in Havana, Rafuse said.
The symbolism of such a United States presence would have changed investors attitudes and more and more companies would have come in and it would have been just different, he said. He added that he thought the analogy applied well to Burma.
In the interview, Unocal disclosed that the Burmese state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise would get a $7 million signing bonus as part of a new production-sharing contract Unocal and Total SA of France signed for exploration in the Andaman Sea.
Such signing bonuses were not unlike those paid to the US department of interior, a standard practice worldwide, said David Garcia, a company spokesman.
The new contract expanded a relationship in which Unocal and Total are partners with state-owned firms in Burma and Thailand in a $1.2 billion project that includes building a 416-mile pipeline from the Yadana offshore gas field to supply gas to Thailand.
Unocals share of the signing bonus was $3.3 million, with the rest to be paid by Total within 30 days of the signing of the contact, Garcia said.
Rafuse voiced hope that the Clinton Administration would steer clear of possible new unilateral sanctions against the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC, which took seized power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
John Shattuck, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, said last week that new US sanctions, including ones that could bar new investment, were being given very, very active consideration.
Shattuck made his remarks Friday, a day after release of the State Departments annual human rights survey said Burmas severe repression of human rights increased in 1996.
The Free Burma Coalition, which says it links more than 100 campus and other groups, has been lobbying Congress and the administration to ban new US investment and require Unocal to void its latest deal in Burma.
We want to stop the oil money from going into SLORCs coffer, said Zar Ni, founder of the group, which claimed victory in persuading Pepsico Inc. last month to become the latest US company to pull out of Burma in response to pressure from human-rights activists.
Rafuse said other companies from other countries of which he said he did not know the names had offered to buy Unocals stake in the Yadana project after President Bill Clinton signed into law a measure last September raising the prospect of new sanctions.
Unocals response to them had been No thank you. Were there to stay, he said, referring to plans to be involved with the Yadana project for at least 30 years, the projected life of a power plant that will be fed by the pipeline.
