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Showdown looms as Burmese junta's a



Subject: Showdown looms as Burmese junta's arrests top 90.


	
	Showdown looms as Burmese junta's arrests top 90
	------------------------------------------------

	Rangoon, Wednesday:

	Burma's military rulers have detained at least 90 pro-democracy 
politicians in a crackdown designed to scuttle their meeting this 
weekend, an opposition source said today.

	Most of those detained were elected members of the National 
League for Democracy, headed by the Nobel peace prize winner Aung Sann 
Suu Kyi. The NLD plans this weekend to hold its first congress since its 
1990 election victory, which the military refused to accept.

	"The number has gone up to 90, the additional ones are also from 
Rangoon," a source close to Ms Suu Kyi said today, adding that at lease 
44 were to attend the meeting.

	The state-run media did not report the crackdown - the worst 
since Ms Suu Kyi's release from house arrest last July - and Government 
officials declined to comment.

	Burma's Foreign Minister, Mr Ohn Gyaw, told a local governor near 
Tokyo that reports of the arrest were "fabricated", Japan's Kyodo 
newsagency said.

	Ms Suu Kyi and other NLD members spent today preparing for the 
three-day congress at her house on Sunday.

	Diplomats in Rangoon said the stage was set a fresh confrontation 
between Ms Suu Kyi and the military Government but added it was unclear 
how far the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council would push its 
crackdown against the NLD.

	The Australian Government today condemned the reported arrests as 
a "major backward step".

[Reuter, 23 May 1996].

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