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Suu Kyi's Party Denounces Terroris
- Subject: Suu Kyi's Party Denounces Terroris
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 20:43:00
Subject: Suu Kyi's Party Denounces Terrorism
Suu Kyi's Party Denounces Terrorism
Monday, July 14, 1997; 3:30 a.m. EDT
RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- The political party of Burmese
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi denounced
terrorism
today and pledged to fight it.
The party's statement comes less than a month after
the chief of
Burma's military intelligence accused the 1991
Nobel Peace
Prize-winner of accepting money from what he called
terrorist
groups.
``The National League for Democracy strongly
condemns any
act of terrorism. It will neither encourage nor
support terrorism
or will ever use such means,'' the statement said.
``We pledge to efface terrorism from our country
together with
the people.''
Suu Kyi and her party adhere to a philosophy of
nonviolence in
their campaign to bring democracy to Burma, which
has been
ruled by the military since 1962.
In a June news conference, Gen. Khin Nyunt, head of
Burmese
military intelligence, accused Suu Kyi of accepting
$85,000
from representatives of American labor and
pro-democracy
groups funded by the U.S. government.
Those groups, he claimed, were involved in plots to
bomb
embassies and the homes of government leaders in
Rangoon,
the Burmese capital.
Suu Kyi has denied the charge. Washington has
denied that the
groups it funds are engaged in terrorist activities
and accuses
the Burmese government of trying to deflect
attention from its
human rights abuses.
Although the statement from the National League for
Democracy, or NLD, was released today, it was dated
July
19, which will be the 50th anniversary of Martyr's
Day in
Burma.
On that day in 1947, Suu Kyi's father, Burma's
independence
hero Aung San, and six of his Cabinet ministers were
assassinated by a political rival.
Aung San advocated democracy for his country, but
his death
plunged Burma into a period of instability and
insurgencies that
culminated in the 1962 military coup.
Suu Kyi repeatedly has called for a dialogue with
Burma's
military rulers since her release from six years of
house arrest in
July 1995. The generals have spurned her and
conducted mass
arrests of party members and supporters in an
attempt to break
the democracy movement.