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Myanmar rebuffs ASEAN's call to free Aung San Suu Kyi and questions the need for an envoy

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Myanmar rebuffs ASEAN's call to free Aung San Suu Kyi and questions the need for an envoy
News

News

Myanmar rebuffs ASEAN's call to free Aung San Suu Kyi and questions the need for an envoy

2026-08-10 11:40 Last Updated At:11:50

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military-backed government has rejected the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ renewed call for the unconditional release of detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi and dismissed the need for the organization’s special envoy on Myanmar, according to the foreign affairs ministry.

President Min Aung Hlaing, the former army chief who had originally seized power in 2021 from Suu Kyi’s civilian government, has been trying to win political legitimacy since the takeover and resume relations with ASEAN.

ASEAN came up with a peace plan for the Southeast Asian country in April 2021 to end hostilities and initiate dialogue among contending parties, to be facilitated by the special envoy. Min Aung Hlaing has since been barred from attending top-level meetings for failing to comply with the plan.

In an apparent effort to placate critics, the government allowed a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit 81-year-old Suu Kyi last week, the first known contact with an outside international independent humanitarian organization since her detention five years ago.

Suu Kyi is serving her sentence under house arrest at an undisclosed location in the capital, Naypyitaw, on charges that her supporters and rights groups have said are politically motivated.

The current ASEAN chair, the Philippines, welcomed the meeting as a step toward dialogue and reconciliation Friday, while urging greater access to political detainees and reiterating its call for Suu Kyi’s “complete and unconditional release.”

Myanmar’s foreign ministry's statement late Saturday criticized the call.

“Although the government has commuted her sentences based on humanitarian considerations, the matter of a full and unconditional release shall only be carried out in accordance with the law,” it said.

The statement also said the government will continue working with ASEAN’s current special envoy, Philippine Foreign Minister Maria Theresa Lazaro, but doesn’t see the need to continue down that path when Singapore takes over on Jan. 1, 2027.

“At present, the government, which emerged from the multiparty democratic elections reflecting the genuine will of the people, has assumed state responsibility,” the statement said.

In a speech more than three months after being sworn in as president following the elections, Min Aung Hlaing dismissed ASEAN’s peace plan, saying some member states have discriminated against Myanmar and it would respond on a case-by-case basis.

Critics dismissed the elections, which were held in December and January, as a sham designed to consolidate the military’s grip on power while ostensibly restoring civilian rule.

Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing talks to journalists as he leaves after delivering speech at the Union Parliament in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)

Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing talks to journalists as he leaves after delivering speech at the Union Parliament in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo)

In this photo released by Myanmar President Office on Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, left, shakes hands with Arnaud de Baecque, resident representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, during their meeting in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (Myanmar President Office via AP)

In this photo released by Myanmar President Office on Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, left, shakes hands with Arnaud de Baecque, resident representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross, during their meeting in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (Myanmar President Office via AP)

Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing speaks during Thailand-Myanmar Business Forum in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)

Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing speaks during Thailand-Myanmar Business Forum in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Wason Wanichakorn)

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 9, 2026--

Certinia today unveiled the System of Action for services businesses, which understands context, applies judgment, and then acts on trusted data and reasoning, so that every decision drives toward real business outcomes.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260909879512/en/

According to the 2026 Global Service Dynamics Report, an independent survey of 1,000 services and IT leaders worldwide, nearly all (98%) have deployed AI in their organization, but only 20% say it has exceeded expectations. Among those reporting success, 70% describe their operations as aligned or fully integrated across sales, delivery, finance, and customer success. Certinia's System of Action is built for exactly that kind of connectivity — uniting the data, the judgment, and the ability to act so that services organizations can run their businesses with certainty.

Certinia's System of Action powers modern services organizations through three integrated components. The first is foundational context: Certinia brings together professional services, customer success, financial management, and CRM data with the unstructured reality of daily work — calls, threads, meetings — into one unified source of truth, closing the gap between what's happening on the ground and what the business needs to know in real-time. The second is compounding intelligence; built on more than 17 years of Certinia's services domain expertise, drawn from the breadth of real projects, timecards, resourcing decisions, and estimates processed across its workflows, so judgment sharpens with every decision. The third is agentic action, which carries that judgment out exactly when and where it's needed, bringing the right knowledge and reasoning to every action across the services lifecycle.

Strengthening the System of Action is the largest expansion of Certinia's Veda AI suite to date, delivering an unprecedented solution purpose-built to operate businesses and accelerate sales & delivery across the entire services lifecycle. This includes new agents, a doubled library of Veda Intelligent Actions (VIAs) that bring Certinia's services expertise directly into existing workflows, and deployment options that provide the flexibility for organizations to use the AI in ways that best fit their stack, strategy, and requirements.

"AI can only move the needle for our customers when it's grounded in real business context and judgment they can trust — a system that understands the business, reasons through it, and acts with little to no margin for error," said DJ Paoni, Chief Executive Officer, Certinia. "That's what our System of Action delivers. Only Certinia can combine a trusted, unified data foundation with our breadth of services expertise and deep business reasoning to meet the accuracy standards services businesses require — and it's why our latest agentic capabilities help customers unlock stronger margins, faster time-to-outcome, and greater customer value."

“Organizations that connect management efficiency gains to delivery quality improvements achieve the strongest overall ROI. The key design principle: AI must be integrated across the full life cycle, not deployed as isolated tools in individual functions,” said Mickey North Rizza, Group Vice President, Enterprise Software and Agents, IDC ¹.

New Veda Agents to Run the Business and Accelerate Sales & Delivery

Certinia's expanded suite of agentic capabilities introduces a lineup of 14 new out-of-the-box Veda agents to accelerate sales and delivery.

Each agent turns the unstructured context of daily work into organizational memory, so automation gets sharper, capturing best practices with every project instead of starting from zero each time.

Using Veda's new agentic capabilities, services teams are able to:

Expanded Veda Intelligent Actions and Capabilities to Streamline Workflows

Certinia has more than doubled the library of Veda Intelligent Actions (VIAs) from 64 to 135. Veda Intelligent Actions are bite-sized, reusable capabilities that bring Certinia's deep domain expertise directly into a customer's workflow and whatever tools their teams already use.

New VIA capabilities offer benefits across every part of a services business:

AI Your Way Provides a New Level of Deployment Flexibility

Most vendors force customers to either adopt their proprietary AI or bring their own and lose depth. With Certinia’s new AI Your Way features, service firms no longer have to compromise. These capabilities provide flexibility across the Veda AI suite, letting organizations use the AI and agentic framework that fits their stack, strategy, and requirements.

Certinia's AI Your Way capabilities give services organizations the option to:

Whether an organization is standardized on Agentforce, building on Claude or Microsoft Copilot, or wants Certinia's own native AI platform to do the heavy lifting, every path draws from the same library of trusted, governed actions grounded in the right context and judgment.

Committing to 100% Agentic Capability Coverage by Year End

Today’s release accelerates a broader trajectory that will culminate in 100% agentic capability coverage across Certinia’s System of Action by year-end, comprising 40+ agents and 300+ VIAs across the services lifecycle. Every professional services, customer success, and financial workflow will be able to be executed by an agentic capability or a human, giving organizations total flexibility in how they operate.

The Advantage That Compounds

As AI models become increasingly interchangeable, competitive advantage will shift to organizations holding the specific data and judgment those models depend upon to act. While every services organization will soon have access to roughly the same AI intelligence, they will not have the same underlying data, institutional judgment, or track record of decisions made and outcomes fed back into ongoing judgment.

That is the unique advantage Certinia has that no other PSA vendor built on siloed functionality can replicate. Certinia's depth of proprietary context and intelligence is what makes Veda the most complete and trustworthy agentic solution built on real business judgment, and it is why Certinia is the durable advantage the world's leading services organizations are built upon to help them protect margins, shorten time-to-outcome, and grow customer value with certainty.

To learn more and see the System of Action in practice, register for Certinia's live webinar Insight to Impact: Introducing the System of Action for Modern Services on September 30, 2026, as product experts demonstrate the system and how it can benefit your organization.

¹ IDC, Operationalizing AI in Professional Services: Practical Steps Toward an Intelligent Operating Model, #US54625226, June 2026

About Certinia

Certinia is the leading System of Action for services businesses, powering organizations with the unified source of truth, services expertise and reasoning, and agentic action to bring the right knowledge and judgment to every decision across the entire services lifecycle. Purpose-built for professional services, customer success, and financial management, the world’s leading services organizations rely on Certinia to maximize margins, deliver faster time-to-outcome, and grow customer value with certainty. Certinia is backed by Haveli Investments, TA Associates, General Atlantic, and Salesforce Ventures. For more information, visit www.certinia.com.

Certinia's System of Action architecture, spanning Professional Services, Customer Success, and Financial Management.

Certinia's System of Action architecture, spanning Professional Services, Customer Success, and Financial Management.

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