EU High Representative Ashton, in failing to embrace this tool, said: "Ideally, we should aim at ensuring a measure of cooperation from the national authorities."
Similarly, a German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that, to help advance human rights in the country, it is "crucial to find some co-operation mechanism with the [Burmese] national authorities."
Yet obtaining such cooperation from the Burmese military in the absence of further pressure is a pipe dream, the report says.
Another favorite form of cooperation is a formal intergovernmental dialogue on human rights, such as those that many governments conduct with China and the EU maintains with a range of repressive countries, including the former-Soviet republics of Central Asia.
"Authoritarian governments understandably welcome these dialogues because they remove the spotlight from human rights discussions," HRW says.
With such dialogues, the public, including domestic activists, is "left in the dark, as are most government officials outside the foreign ministry."
But Western governments also often cite the existence of such dialogues as justification for not speaking concretely about human rights violations and remedies in more meaningful settings -- as Sweden did, for example, during its EU presidency when asked why human rights had not featured more prominently at the EU-Central Asia ministerial conference.
The UN and EU are accused of "cowardice" for claiming to tackle human rights abuses in places like China or Uzbekistan through quiet dialogue and cooperation, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report Monday.
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