[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index
][Thread Index
]
REPORT:NLD WANTS TO REJOIN
- Subject: REPORT:NLD WANTS TO REJOIN
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:35:00
Report: Burma Party Wants to
Rejoin
Tuesday, June 24, 1997; 5:49 a.m. EDT
RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- The political party headed by
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi wants to
rejoin the
military-run convention to draft a new constitution
for Burma,
state-run newspapers said today.
The National League for Democracy walked out of the
convention in 1995, criticizing it as undemocratic.
Convention
leaders then expelled the party, and the government
has said
there is no procedure to allow it to rejoin.
Commentaries that ran in all three Burmese papers
said a
resolution passed last month by the democracy party's
executive committee called for it ``to rejoin the
national
convention and to conclude the convention honorably.''
It was unclear whether the party had formally asked
to rejoin
the convention. Suu Kyi and party leaders could not be
reached for comment because the military regime has
cut their
phones lines.
The convention has met intermittently since 1993,
but there
have been no meetings for more than a year.
Diplomats and
analysts suspect that several participating groups
are unhappy
with the charter being drafted.
Democracy activists have labeled the convention a sham
because most delegates were handpicked by the
military, and
the constitution they are drafting enshrines
military rule.
The military has ruled Burma, which it calls
Myanmar, since
1962. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate and daughter of
independence hero Aung San, was thrust into
prominence by
the 1988 uprising against military rule that was
crushed when
troops killed more than 3,000 protesters.
Her democracy party won a 1990 election that the
military
refused to honor. Though it won 82 percent of that
vote, it had
only about 15 percent of the seats at the
constitutional
convention.
The commentaries in today's state-run newspapers
derided
Suu Kyi and her party for seeking readmittance to the
convention.
``Why and for what reasons do you want to rejoin
the national
convention, which the political stunt star wife of
the Englishman
(Suu Kyi) and her masters had slandered and
opposed,'' said
one editorial written by a high-ranking
intelligence officer under
a pseudonym.
On Monday, the same author wrote that Suu Kyi was a
puppet
of the CIA.
``The national convention is not a licenseless
bootleg liquor
shop where you can go in and come out without
discipline,'' he
said.
Diplomats have said that relations between Suu Kyi
and the
regime deteriorated sharply after her party left
the convention.
The regime stepped up arrests of party members,
prevented
Suu Kyi from delivering her weekend public
addresses, paid a
mob to attack her motorcade with sticks and pipes,
and has
restricted people from visiting her home.
From 1989 to 1995, Suu Kyi was under house arrest
for her
political activities.