(09/22/88) To Go Election or Not; 1

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Subject: (09/22/88) To Go Election or Not; 1,0000 Killed

                        Reuters Ltd Reuters

                     September  22, 1988, Thursday, PM cycle



HEADLINE: OPPOSITION LEADERS MEET IN BURMA OVER ELECTION PLAN

BYLINE: By Kevin Cooney

DATELINE: BANGKOK, Sept 22



 
   Opposition leaders were meeting in Rangoon on Thursday to decide whether or
not to join in elections promised by the ruling army.

   A few gunshots were heard in the city overnight, but Western diplomats
reached by telephone said the level of violence had diminished greatly as the
army moved to control a hostile populace. 
   The army seized power on Sunday after months of pro-democracy demonstrations 
and strikes. Since then about 180 people have been killed for attacking troops
or for looting, official Radio Rangoon has reported.

   Western diplomats and other observers put the death toll much higher, some as
high as 1,000. They say most of those killed were unarmed demonstrators.

   Opposition leaders Gen. Tin Oo, Gen. Aung San Suu Kyi and Brig. Aung Gyi
received a letter from the military government of  Saw Maung  on Wednesday
urging them to participate in promised elections.

   An aide to Tin Oo said the three would meet together on Thursday and also
hold consultations with student leaders over the election issue.

   They refused to join in elections within three months offered last week by
the Burma Socialist Program Party, purportedly overthrown by the army on Sunday.

   The opposition said three months was not enough time within which to organize
political parties and run a campaign and said the BSPP, which ruled Burma for a 
quarter century of increasing poverty and political repression, was incapable of
running a fair election. 
   The army's letter did not set a date for elections but said the country's
military rulers wanted them held soon.

   "The problem is that if we do not take part in the elections the present
party will come in under another name and they will be the only runners in the
race," Tin Oo's aide said. "And again it will be a one-party state, run by the
system."

   He added: "If we agree to their advice and some parties register and take
part in the elections, we will be betraying the students and workers who have
been struggling all along and who have suffered a great deal."

   The opposition claims the army move was a false coup designed to crush
dissent and keep old guard BSPP leaders, including veteran authoritarian ruler
Ne Win, in power.

   The aide said the three leaders had lost touch with some more militant
student groups.

   "I believe fighting will continue, but with students outnumbered and
outgunned we may see a period of guerrilla war and terrorism," a Western
diplomat said. 
   "The concentrations of troops today are the largest we have seen," said a
diplomat in Rangoon's main business district on Thursday.

   Soldiers have set up checkpoints on main roads and are searching all buses
and cars for weapons. Houses are being searched and citizens stopped in the
street and frisked for weapons.

   The Working People's Daily appeared on Thursday, the first newspaper to be
published since the army took over, imposed a curfew, banned gatherings of five 
or more people and formed a government including only one civilian.

   "It is once again very definitely a government newspaper," a diplomat said.

   For a brief period after the collapse of BSPP control and the army's seizure 
of power, The Working People's Daily, The Guardian and other state-owned
newspapers were reporting the turmoil in Burma in an objective fashion.

   A diplomat in touch with Mandalay, Burma's second city, said the situation
there was tense on Wednesday and there was a lot of shooting.

   Mandalay, to the north, had been firmly in the hands of monks and students
for weeks. 
   Diplomats said there was no sign of government employees returning to work as
they had been ordered to do by the army.

   Civil servants and almost all other workers in Burma have been on strike for 
weeks seeking the formation of an independent interim government that would lead
the country back to democracy.