NEWS - Twenty-one Myanmar dissident

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Subject: NEWS - Twenty-one Myanmar dissidents ``heading for US'' ?

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