Wired News on May 27 & 28, 1995

[FreeBurma@xxxxxxx]

Attn: Burma Newsreaders
Re: Wired News on May 27 & 28, 1995
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Burmese Premier to Visit Indonesia, Singapore

      RANGOON, May 28 (Reuter) - Burmese Prime Minister General Than Shwe
will pay official visits to Indonesia and Singapore soon, the state-run
Myanmar (Burma) News Agency reported on Sunday. 

    The agency did not say when the visits would take place. 

    It will be Than Shwe's first visits to members of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) since becoming chairman of Burma's ruling
State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1992. 

    In addition to talks on economic cooperation in both countries, Than Shwe
was also expected to discuss the prospect of Burma's participation in ASEAN
activities, the agency said. 

    Other ASEAN members are Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-05-28 08:11:54 EDT
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Burma's Election Anniversary Passes Quietly

      BANGKOK, May 27 (Reuter) - The fifth anniversary of an election victory
for Burma's democratic oppositon which the military rulers refused to
recognise passed without incident on Saturday, residents in the Burmese
capital Rangoon said. 

    Dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who co-founded the National League for
Democracy (NLD) which won over 80 percent of the seats in the 1990 polls,
remains in detention in her Rangoon home and dozens of other NLD members
remain in prison. 

    A U.S. congressman who last year became the first person to meet Suu Kyi
since her July 1989 detention with the exception of immediate family members
is travelling to Rangoon again. 

    A U.S. embassy offical in Bangkok said Bill Richardson, a New Mexico
Democrat, would arrive in Rangoon this weekend. 

    Diplomats in the Burmese capital said Richardson was expected to ask
Burma's ruling military body for another meeting with Suu Kyi but permission
to meet her was seen as unlikely. 

    Suu Kyi met top generals in September and again in October but there has
been no sign of another meeting since then. 

    The government recently refused Suu Kyi's husband, British academic
Michael Aris, a visa to travel to Burma and visit his wife. 

    One Rangoon diplomat speculated that the government was putting pressure
on Suu Kyi, the 49-year-old daughter of Burma's independence hero, to accept
freedom under specific terms precluding her from getting involved in the
political reform process. She was apparently refusing liberty on those terms.


    ``They're talking past each other,'' the diplomat told Reuters. 

    Burma's ruling military body was set up in 1988 after troops crushed a
nationwide democracy uprising. Burma's military have ruled the country in one
guise or another since a 1962 coup. 

    Burma's state-run media made no mention of either the election
anniversary or of Richardson's visit on Saturday. 

    The New Light of Mayanmar newspaper, widely regarded as the mouthpiece of
the ruling military, carried an editorial exhorting journalists to step up
efforts to inform the people about the government's policies and encourage
the public to cooperate to achieve government goals. 

REUTER
Transmitted: 95-05-27 09:00:33 EDT
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