Garman Protests Burma Visit Rejecti

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Subject: Garman Protests Burma Visit Rejection

                              Agence France Presse

                            March  20, 1997 20:11 GMT

HEADLINE: Bonn protests  Burma  visit rejection for German politician

DATELINE: BONN, March 20

 BODY:
   The German government formally protested Thursday to the military regime in
 Burma  against its refusal to allow a prominent German politician to visit the 
country.

   Foreign ministry spokesman Martin Erdmann said that on the instructions of
Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel the Burmese ambassador in Bonn, U Tun Ngwe, had
been summoned to the ministry. At the same time the German ambassador in
Rangoon, Wolfgang Wiesner, had
registered a protest with the Burmese government asking it to think again.

   Count Otto Lambsdorff, a leading member of the governmental Free Democratic
Party and a former economy minister, had wanted to visit  Burma  in his capacity
as head of the FDP-backed Friedrich Naumann Foundation.

   But he was told that he could not make the visit, as he intended among other 
things to meet with the opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San 
Suu Kyi.

   A condition of his being allowed to visit was that he should not meet with
opposition figures.

LOAD-DATE: March 20, 1997