Senate votes for compromise on Rang

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Subject: Senate votes for compromise on Rangoon junta.


		Senate votes for compromise on Rangoon junta
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	The United States Senate rejected tough sanctions against Burma 
yesterday in favour of a compromise that would permit sanctions only if 
the ruling junta crackdown harder on its critics.

	Senators adopted on a voice vote an amendment that would allow 
the President to ban new investment in Burma if its military rulers 
"harmed, rearrested for political acts, or exiled" the pro-democracy 
leader and Nobel Peace Prize-winner, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi.

	Any large-scale repression or violence against Ms Suu Kyi's 
followers could also trigger a prohibition on US investemnt under the 
legislation, sponsored by Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine.

	The legisaltion would also bar most Burmese government officials 
from receiving US visas and require the President to work with other 
countries in pressing for democracy and human rights in Burma.

	Adoption of the White House-backed amendment as part of a $US 
12.2 billion foreign aid legisaltion followed several hours of debate and 
days of high-level negotiations between administration and Senate staff.

	Senator Cohen's amendment replaced a provision, backed by 
Republican Senator Mitch McConnel of Kentucky, that would have banned all 
US aid and investment until an elected governemnt took power in Burma.

	That provision drew strong opposition from the administration of 
the President, Mr Clinton, as well as from the American oil industry, 
with both lobbying hard for a compromise.

	US oil companies, led by Los Angeles-based Unocal, account for 
most of the $US 225 million that US firms have invested directly in 
Burma,according to the non-profit Investor Responsibitlity Research 
Centre. 
	During a lengthy debate on how to push the South East Asia 
country toward democracy, senators unanimously lambasted the military 
clique that seized power in 1988 and has kept a strangledhold on the 
country since.
	"They're plenty bad and we do not defend that," said Senator 
Bennett Johnston of Louisiana, who opposed McConnell's tough unilateral 
sanctions.
	But Senator Johnston and others suggested sanctions would be 
inffective without support from US allies in Europe and Asia, leaving 
foreign firms to profit from contracts that vacating American companies 
would leave behind.
	"I know of no other country in the area that would support this 
sanctions," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California.
	Amid growing concern about human rughts abuses in Burma and a 
grassroots campaign that has prompted a number of American firms to pull 
out of the country, US officials rejected an earliter compromise as too 
soft on the junta, according to sources following the talks.
	But the compromise amendment that ultimately passed still failed 
to satisfy Burma's most outspoken critics in Congress.
	"Enough is enough. Let's stop allowing US investment to prop up 
the SLORC," said Senator Jesse Helms, Republican chairman of t he Seante 
Foreign Relations Committee, referring to the ruling State Law and Order 
Restoration Council.

[By SARAH JACKSON-HAN in Washington, 27/07/96].
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