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UN assistant secretary general meet
- Subject: UN assistant secretary general meet
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 17:14:00
Subject: UN assistant secretary general meets Burmese officials, opposition
UN assistant secretary general meets
Burmese officials, opposition
(ADDS detail, background)
RANGOON, May 10 (AFP) - A senior Burmese junta member met UN
assistant secretary general for political affairs Alavaro de Soto
on Saturday
following his discussions with the opposition, official sources said.
De Soto wrapped up his four-day official visit by meeting the
junta's first
secretary and military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt Saturday
morning, the
sources said.
The UN official Friday met Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National
League
for Democracy (NLD), which swept 1990 elections to a parliament never
convened by the junta, and her executive committee, party sources
said.
No information was available on the content of the discussions.
On Friday, De Soto met with Htun Oo, chairman the ethnic Shan
Nationalities
League for Democracy (SNLD), an unrelated political party which
also won
seats in the election.
Htun Oo told AFP they had a very fruitful and interesting
discussion, in which
SNLD executives had a chance to brief the UN official on the
prevailing
situation and the position of the ethnic minorities.
Informed sources said a document passed to De Soto and
representing the
views of the elected representatives of ethnic minorities in
Burma called for a
tripartite dialogue among democratic, ethnic and military forces.
The goal of the dialogue should be a democratic and federal
union, according
to a copy of the document obtained by AFP.
The document rejected the National Convention set up by the
military's ruling
State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to draft a new
constitution.
"At the convention only 15 percent of elected members were
included and the
rest were hand-picked," it said.
The Nationalities' demands for democracy and self-determination
under a
federation were ingnored, while the military presented guidelines
preserving for
itself a leading political role in future state affairs.
The military was trying to control state and executive powers
from the central
all the way down to the township level, and those few political
parties which
had not been declared illegal were prevented from carrying out
political
activities, the document said.
De Soto also met Rangoon-based diplomats, Burmese Foreign
Minister Ohn
Gyaw, Chief Justice Aung Toe and other members of the National
Convention
convening commission.
Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD withdrew from the convention after a
percentage of
seats in any future parliament was reserved for the military,
saying it was
useless to attempt to influence official drafts through the process.