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Twenty-one Myanmar dissidents ``heading for US''

  
BANGKOK, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Twenty-one Myanmar dissidents left 
Thailand for resettlement in the United States on Monday, a local 
government official said, the first to leave since Myanmar exiles 
seized Yangon's embassy in Bangkok last month. 

``Twenty-one students left early Monday morning for United States 
while hundreds of others are being processed for resettlement,'' 
deputy governor of western Ratchburi province, Preecha Ruangchan, 
told reporters. 

``The new policy is to seek their resettlement as soon as we can and 
then to close the holding centre,'' he said. 

A U.S. embassy spokesman told Reuters that no such group had left for 
the United States on Monday. ``We have had small groups go in the 
past but from our records the last we had was one that left on 
November 18,'' she said. 

Thailand imposed stricter conditions on Myanmar dissidents, staying 
at the holding centre 100 km (60 miles) southwest of Bangkok, after 
five armed men took 89 people hostage at the embassy on October 1. 

The gunmen released the hostages the next day in exchange for free 
passage to the jungle along Thailand's western border with Myanmar. 

More than 2,000 dissidents, who fled Yangon's crackdown on pro-
democracy elements during the 1988 military coup, have left the 
holding centre for resettlement in the United States, Canada, 
Australia, England and Sweden. Another 1,200 remain. 

04:29 11-29-99