Reuters-Myanmar's Suu Kyi faces dil

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Subject: Reuters-Myanmar's Suu Kyi faces dilemma over dying husband 

Myanmar's Suu Kyi faces dilemma over dying husband
03:12 a.m. Mar 18, 1999 Eastern
By David Brunnstrom

BANGKOK, March 18 (Reuters) - Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
faces an agonising choice between family and country unless Myanmar's
military government issues her gravely ill British husband a visa to visit
her.

The 1991 Nobel Peace laureate has not left Myanmar for the past 11 years,
fearing she would not be allowed back if she did. She appears unlikely to do
so now whatever the circumstances.

Sources close to her family say her husband, Michael Aris, an Oxford
academic who has been denied a visa to Myanmar for the past three years, is
suffering from prostate cancer that has spread to his spine and lungs and is
not expected to live long.

The government has long been seeking a way to get the woman who has been the
biggest thorn in its side for the past decade out of the country. It has not
formally responded to Aris's latest visa request.

``We understand they are still considering his request,'' said a diplomat in
Yangon, the Myanmar capital, adding that the generals would be delighted if
they could force Suu Kyi to leave.

The government has not responded to requests for comment.

But sources close to Suu Kyi's family say it has responded unofficially to
the visa request by saying ``it is for the sick person to be visited,'' not
vice versa.

Suu Kyi and Aris have not seen one another since mid-1995, shortly after she
was released from six years of house arrest.

Tin Oo, vice chairman of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, told
Reuters on Wednesday she was ``very worried'' about her husband but could
not leave Myanmar.

``The lady has been working hard for democracy, for the people and the
party, she is worried about him, but she will never leave the country,
because she knows that if she does the military regime will never allow her
to return.''

Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her courage in standing up
to military rule, has not left Myanmar since she returned to Yangon in early
1988 to nurse her dying mother.

She is the daughter of Myanmar's foremost national hero Aung San, who won
independence from Britain in the 1940s, and has shown a steely determination
to promote democracy since emerging as a dissident leader during a national

uprising in 1988.

Aris has been quoted in the past as saying that when they married Suu Kyi
told him that if it ever came to a choice between family and country she
would have to put country first.

Suu Kyi has shown her resolve in the past by enduring the lengthy house
arrest rather than go into exile.

There have been repeated calls in Myanmar's state media in the past year for
her to leave the country or for the government to expel her.

Sources close to Suu Kyi's family said appeals on Aris's behalf had come
from Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the United Nations and the Sultan
of Brunei among others. Britain is also backing the visa request on
humanitarian grounds.

Complicating the issue though is a dispute between Myanmar and the European
Union over the latter's ban on visits by senior Yangon officials.

Britain has been particularly vocal in its opposition to Myanmar's
attendance at a March 30 summit meeting in Germany between EU and Southeast
Asian countries, which now looks likely to be scrapped.

The family sources said that even if Aris were granted a visa he was not
currently fit enough to travel. However, he would attempt to if his
condition improved, even though there were fears he might not survive the
journey.