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”. “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. "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. “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. 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. 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. “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. 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.” 
 
 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. 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”. 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.
– 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."