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220 Myanamr Oppositions Arrested



Myanmar Opposition Members Detained


 .c The Associated Press 

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's military government has detained 220 members
of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party, the party said today.

``The National League for Democracy calls for the unconditional release of its
members and strongly condemns the arbitrary arrests by the authorities,'' the
party said in a statement. 

The military warned the party that convening Parliament on its own, as it had
said it might, would result in arrests. 

Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but the military
has never allowed Parliament to meet. The party said today that 63 of those
elected to Parliament had been detained. 

The government indirectly confirmed the crackdown in a statement Monday night,
saying it had ``invited'' National League for Democracy members to official
guesthouses for an exchange of views on the party's plans to convene
Parliament. 

The term ``invited'' is generally understood to be a euphemism for
``detained.'' The guesthouses have been used in the past to detain dissidents.

The league earlier reported the arrests of 110 of its members, but tallies of
detentions are slow because communications are poor in Myanmar, also known as
Burma. 

Meanwhile, an exiled student opposition group said at least 12 Buddhist monks
were arrested and three injured in Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city,
when police broke up a National League for Democracy rally on Friday. 

The All Burma Students' Democratic Front, in a statement issued in Thailand,
said 200 monks and 50 students took part in the demonstration, shouting anti-
military slogans and distributing leaflets. 

The student group reported smaller demonstrations took place the same day in
several other cities in central Myanmar but were not disturbed by police. 

The report could not be independently confirmed. The government spokesman said
he had not heard of any arrests of monks in Mandalay or of a rally there. 

Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and was under house arrest from
1989 to 1995, recently has stepped up her campaign to bring democracy to
Myanmar. 

AP-NY-09-08-98 1121EDT