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Australia,ASEAN and Burma.
Attack on rights abuses.
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Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was to confront his Burmese
counterpart over human rights issues last night at the first face to face
meeting between them. Mr Downer's aides said Australia's concern at
recent developments in Burma would be top of the agenda at his meeting
with Burmese Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw, an approach at odds with the more
accomodating stance of many of Australia's regional neighbors.
But Ohn Gyaw yesterday dismissed Australia's protest saying he
would be telling Mr Downer what he termed the truth about Burma at the
short meeting scheduled for last night in Jakarta.
The meeting with Burmese delegation was the most contentious
event in an otherwise low-key series of diplomatic meetings for Mr Downer
at a gathering of ministers from the Association of South-East Asian Nations.
After his series of recent stumbles, Mr Downer's aides tried to
keep the minister out of the public eye in Jakarta yesterday saying there
was "nothing of great substance" for him to talk about with journalists.
A senior foreign affairs official, John Dauth, said Mr Downer
would be raising allegations of human rights abuses and the Burmese
military regime and the National League for Democracy.
He said Mr Downer would be joining in a "chorus of calls" from
the international community for an inquiry into the suspicious death in a
Burmese jail last month of a pro-democracy activist and honorary consul
for a number of European countries, James Leander Nichols.
But at a press conference yesterday, Ohn Gyaw rejected claims for
an independent inquiry saying Mr Nichols was a Burmese citizen who had
broken the law and who had died from a stroke as a result of eating rich
and fatty food in jail.
He also dismissed the possibility of Australian protests saying
Burma was an independent country.
"We can listen, we can explain to them, We can transmit what are
the true fatcs," he said.
[By Nick Cater, in Jakarta, 23 July 1996].
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