YANGON (Reuters) - Veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar to advise on the Rohingya crisis, saying it was conducting a “whitewash” and accusing the country’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership”. 
 
 Richardson, a former Clinton administration cabinet member, quit as the 10-member advisory board was making its first visit to western Rakhine State, from where nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled in recent months. 
 
 “The main reason I am resigning is that this advisory board is a whitewash,” Richardson told Reuters in an interview, adding he did not want to be part of “a cheerleading squad for the government”. 
 
 Richardson said he got into an argument with Suu Kyi during a meeting on Monday with other members of the board, when he brought up the case of two Reuters reporters who are on trial accused of breaching the country’s Officials Secrets Act. 
 
 He said Suu Kyi’s response was “furious”, saying the case of the reporters “was not part of the work of the advisory board”. The argument continued at a dinner later that evening, the former New Mexico governor said. 
 
 Suu Kyi’s spokesman, Zaw Htay, told Reuters on Thursday that the Advisory Board was meeting about the “Rakhine issue”. 
 
 “(Richardson) talked on a topic outside the agenda of the meetings and went beyond the framework,” Zaw Htay said. “We feel sorry for his resignation due to the misunderstanding.” Reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of the crisis in Rakhine, from where 688,000 Rohingya have fled an army crackdown on insurgents since late August, according to estimates by the United Nations. 
 
 They were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner in Yangon. The government has cited police as saying they were arrested for possessing secret documents relating to the security situation in Rakhine. 
 
 ‘GOOD FAITH EFFORTS’ 
 
 U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert called Richardson’s decision to resign from the board and his reasons for doing so “cause for concern”, but noted he had been acting as a private citizen in joining the board and visiting Myanmar, which is also known as Burma. 
 
 “Ultimately, the Burmese government and military have the authority to determine whether the Advisory Board will succeed,” Nauert said. “The United States has made clear that we are willing to support good faith efforts to implement the Annan Commission recommendations.” 
 
 The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Myanmar last year, to advise on enacting the findings of an earlier commission headed by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. 
 
 The armed forces have been accused by Rohingya witnesses and human rights activists of carrying out killings, rapes and arson in a campaign senior officials in the United Nations and United States have described as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar rejects that label and has denied nearly all the allegations. 
 
 Richardson said he was also “taken aback by the vigor with which the media, the United Nations, human rights groups and in general the international community were disparaged” during the last three days of meetings the board held with Myanmar officials. 
 
 “She’s not getting good advice from her team,” Richardson said of Suu Kyi, whom he said he has known since the 1980s. “I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown moral leadership on the Rakhine issue and the allegations made, and I regret that.” 
 
 Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson speaks during an interview with Reuters as a member of an international advisory board on the crisis of Rakhine state in Yangon, Myanmar January 24, 2018. REUTERS/Ann Wang 
 
 Suu Kyi’s national security adviser, Thaung Tun, told Reuters he had escorted the other board members on a trip to Rakhine on Wednesday, but that Richardson had not taken part. 
 
 “He said he was unhappy about the situation but I am not sure what he was unhappy about,” he said. “This is just the initial stage, this is the start of a whole year of business so I don’t know what happened to make him feel like that.” 
 
 PANEL CHAIRMAN SLAMMED 
 
 Before Richardson quit the advisory board had 10 members, including five from overseas, chaired by former Thai Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai. 
 
 Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, also had harsh words for Surakiart. 
 
 The board chairman, he said, was not “genuinely committed” to implementing recommendations regarding the issues of Rohingya safety, citizenship, peace, stability and development. 
 
 “He parroted the dangerous and untrue notion that international NGOs employ radicals and that humanitarian agencies are providing material support to ARSA,” Richardson said, referring to Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army militants. 
 
 Surakiart was traveling with other members of the board in Rakhine and did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 Another board member, former South African Defence Minister Roelof Meyer, told Reuters the visit to Rakhine had been “very constructive”. 
 
 “If anybody would say that we are just a rubber stamp or a voice on behalf of the government that would be completely untrue, unfair,” he said. “We haven’t done any recommendations so far.” 
 
 Other members of the board, which also includes British doctor and politician Lord Darzi of Denham and speaker of the Swedish parliament Urban Ahlin, were not immediately available for comment. 
 
 Richardson said he declined to join the advisory board’s tour of a new repatriation camp in Rakhine State on Wednesday, instead traveling to Yangon. 
 
 MASS GRAVE 
 
 Myanmar’s military said earlier this month its soldiers had taken part in the killings of 10 captured Muslim “terrorists” during insurgent attacks at the beginning of September, after Buddhist villagers had forced the captured men into a grave the villagers had dug. 
 
 It was a rare acknowledgment of wrongdoing during its operations in Rakhine by the Myanmar military, which said legal action would be taken against members of the security forces who violated their rules of engagement and the villagers involved. 
 
 Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson pauses during an interview with Reuters as a member of an international advisory board on the crisis of Rakhine state in Yangon, Myanmar January 24, 2018. REUTERS/Ann Wang 
 
 Richardson said he has asked the board to recommend that the Myanmar government set up an independent investigation into “the mass grave issue, especially as it pertained to ... the involvement of the military”. He did not say how the board had responded. 
 
 The Rohingya crisis erupted after ARSA attacks on security posts in Rakhine on Aug. 25 triggered a fierce military response. Myanmar says its troops were engaged in legitimate counterinsurgency operations. 
 
 The U.N. on Wednesday called on Myanmar to give aid agencies unhindered access to camps it has built for tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees after agreeing a deal with Bangladesh on their return. ||||| "She believes there's a concerted international effort against Myanmar, and I believe she is wrong," Richardson said Wednesday evening in an interview at his hotel in downtown Yangon, the country's biggest city. "She blames all the problems that Myanmar is having on the international media, on the U.N., on human rights groups, on other governments, and I think this is caused by the bubble that is around her, by individuals that are not giving her frank advice." ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What has Aung San Suu Kyi said about Rohingya Muslims? 
 
 Veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to advise on the Rohingya crisis. 
 
 He claimed the panel was a "whitewash" and accused Ms Suu Kyi, his long-time friend, of lacking "moral leadership". 
 
 Myanmar accused him of pursuing "his own agenda". 
 
 More than 650,000 Rohingya people, from a mostly-Muslim minority in Buddhist Myanmar, fled to Bangladesh last year in the face of a military crackdown. 
 
 Many are now living in refugee camps in the neighbouring country. Bangladesh has said they will all be returned to Myanmar within two years. 
 
 Mr Richardson added that Ms Suu Kyi had been "furious" when he raised the case of two Reuters reporters on trial in Myanmar. 
 
 The journalists have been charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act while working on coverage of the Rohingya crisis. 
 
 Ms Suu Kyi "exploded" at Mr Richardson when he mentioned the journalists, he told the New York Times. 
 
 "Her face was quivering, and if she had been a little closer to me, she might have hit me, she was so furious," Mr Richardson said. 
 
 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Bill Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico, has sharply criticised Aung San Suu Kyi 
 
 Mr Richardson, a former adviser to the Clinton administration, has known Ms Suu Kyi for decades and visited the Nobel laureate while she was under house arrest in the 1990s. 
 
 He told Reuters he was resigning from the advisory board because it was a "whitewash" and he did not want to be part of a "cheerleading squad for the government". 
 
 He was "alarmed by the lack of sincerity with which the critical issue of citizenship was discussed," he wrote in a statement. 
 
 What has happened to the Rohingya? 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Watch: Who are the Rohingya? 
 
 There were around one million Rohingya people in Myanmar at the start of 2017, where they have their own language and culture. But the government sees them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. 
 
 In August last year, after Rohingya militants in Rakhine state attacked police posts, people started to flee across the border. Arriving in Bangladesh, they told repeated stories of troops, backed by local Buddhist mobs, burning villages and attacking and killing civilians. 
 
 The military offensive has been described by the United Nations as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing" - something Myanmar denies. 
 
 Mr Richardson went on to say he had been "taken aback by the vigour" with which Ms Suu Kyi had "disparaged" the media, the UN, human rights groups and the international community during three days of meetings. 
 
 "She's not getting good advice from her team," he said. 
 
 "I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown moral leadership on the Rakhine issue and the allegations made, and I regret that." 
 
 Myanmar's government said Mr Richardson was pursuing "his own agenda" and the government had decided his continued participation on the board was "not in the best interest of all concerned". 
 
 The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Ms Suu Kyi's government last year. 
 
 Blistering criticism 
 
 BBC South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head 
 
 Rarely can such blistering criticism have come from a seasoned diplomat of a woman whose cause he once championed, and whom he considered a friend. 
 
 Ms Suu Kyi's government has denied allegations of horrific human rights abuses and stubbornly resisted pressure to allow international organisations access to Rakhine state. Bill Richardson's fear that the board could be just a cheerleader for the government may be quietly shared by other members and his reservations will have surprised few. 
 
 But strong and personal reproaches of Ms Suu Kyi's attitude may destroy a personal relationship going back more than two decades. 
 
 She is known to be intolerant of such slights and strong-willed to the point of stubbornness. 
 
 There is little likelihood that she will change her views because of his comments. More likely they will compound a sense, shared by her millions of supporters, that western governments and political leaders are treating her unfairly, and that she should look elsewhere for sympathy. 
 
 Until Mr Richardson resigned, the board had 10 members, five of whom are from overseas. 
 
 One of those, former South African Defence Minister Roelof Meyer, travelled with the board's remaining members to Rakhine state on Wednesday. 
 
 He told Reuters the visit had been "very constructive", and said any suggestion the board was "just a rubber stamp or a voice on behalf of the government... would be completely untrue, unfair. We haven't done any recommendations so far." 
 
 Another member of the board, Khin Nyo, told the BBC that Mr Richardson was asked not to urge for the release of the Reuters journalists in the meeting as it did not concern the board. 
 
 "The advisory board is independent and [the government] don't restrict anything on us," she said.
– Bill Richardson's resume is a long one: He's the former New Mexico governor, US ambassador to the UN, energy secretary under Bill Clinton, and member of the Advisory Board on Rakhine State. That last role is no longer a current one, and that fact is making waves. Richardson resigned Wednesday from the international panel convened by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to advise on the Rohingya refugee crisis, and he had harsh words for Suu Kyi, whom Richardson has known for decades and says he likes "enormously," reports the BBC. In comments to Reuters, he called the panel a "whitewash" and a "cheerleading squad for the government." The resignation was spurred by a Monday argument that occurred as Richardson was in Myanmar. He raised the topic of the two Reuters reporters on trial—they were covering the Rohingya crisis and are accused of violating the Official Secrets Act—and got a "furious" reaction from Suu Kyi, he says, who saw the topic as outside the purview of the board. "Her face was quivering, and if she had been a little closer to me, she might have hit me," he tells the New York Times, adding she has "developed an arrogance of power." He says the argument resumed at dinner. Myanmar's response, per the BBC, is that Richardson should "review himself over his personal attack." The Los Angeles Times says the resignation of "probably the panel's most prominent member ... offers possible insight into the thinking of Suu Kyi." Richardson's take: "She blames all the problems that Myanmar is having on the international media, on the UN, on human rights groups, on other governments, and I think this is caused by the bubble that is around her, by individuals that are not giving her frank advice."