The EU had imposed investment sanctions against Myanmar in October last year but the oil and gas industry was exempted from the ban following French government pressure, said the US Campaign for Burma (USCB), which plans to hold protests Tuesday in front of the French embassy in Washington and consulates in five other US cities. The protests are to coincide with a shareholders meeting in Paris of French energy giant Total, which has vast investments in Myanmar. USCB charged that the French government "went out of the way to entirely omit oil and gas investments" in EU sanctions against Myanmar, allegedly to protect Total. "France has repeatedly fought, diluted and otherwise tried in every possible way to undermine support for human rights in Burma (Myanmar) solely to protect the interests of Total Oil's operations in the country," said Aung Din, a former political prisoner and USCB co-founder. "It is time for France to change its Burma policy, which is nothing short of blood for gas," he said. USCB is a member of the newly-formed Total Oil coalition, a group of 53 organizations based in 18 countries pressuring the company to cut ties to Myanmar's military junta. Total launched in 1992 a project to build and develop a natural gas pipeline from Myanmar's Andaman Sea across the country and into neighboring Thailand, in partnership with the military junta, which provided security for the pipeline region. According to a recent report from the Burma Campaign United Kingdom, USCB's sister group in Britain, the Total project provided as much as 450 million dollars annually to the junta, which has been condemned worldwide for alleged human rights abuses and suppression of democracy. "It is clear that the company is one of the regime's main pillars of financial support," the report said. "The French government's going out of the way to protect Total is highly hypocritical of what they had been saying all along about other countries," said Jeremy Woodrum, the founder of the USCB, citing persistent French opposition to the US-led war on Iraq, as an example. The French embassy in Washington said it was not aware of USCB's plans to hold protests in front of the embassy and French consulates in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston on Tuesday. Total holds a 31.24 percent stake in the Yadana gas field project, whose other stakeholders include American energy giant Unocal (28.26 percent) and Thailand's PTTEP (25.5 percent). Both companies entered into the venture before sanctions were imposed by their governments. Unocal is barred from pumping any new investment into Myanmar, on which the United States had imposed a trade and investment ban. "While Unocal's position in Burma did not weaken the US government's policy against Burma, Total's close relations with French President Jacques Chirac has led to the French government virtually wielding veto power over EU policy on Myanmar," Woodrum said. PIN//AFP