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NEWS - Suu Kyi Says No Deal Struck
- Subject: NEWS - Suu Kyi Says No Deal Struck
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1999 21:20:00
Subject: NEWS - Suu Kyi Says No Deal Struck for World Bank Aid to Myanmar
Suu Kyi Says No Deal Struck for World Bank Aid to Myanmar
AP
05-JAN-99
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung
San Suu Kyi has denied she endorsed a deal for the World
Bank to provide a grant of $1 billion to Myanmar if the
military government opens a dialogue with her.
In a speech made to party members on Dec. 4 and which
was smuggled out of Myanmar and posted today on the
Internet, Suu Kyi questioned reports of the deal and the
rationale of any such agreement.
"That this aid will be given if an agreement can be reached
is
also an assumption by the media people," Suu Kyi said. "Let
me tell you that this news is without any foundation."
The World Bank's lending window to Myanmar, also known
as Burma, has been closed since 1990, when the military
government refused to honor the results of a free and fair
election in which Suu Kyi's party, the National League for
Democracy, won 82 percent of the seats in parliament.
Myanmar's current crop of generals came to power in 1988
by brutally crushing a nationwide democracy uprising. More
than 3,000 protesters, including Buddhist monks, were
gunned down by soldiers.
Suu Kyi's attempt to convene parliament in September of last
year roused the government into arresting nearly a thousand
members of her party and refusing to release them until they
resigned.
The unwillingness of the regime to negotiate with Suu Kyi
and the deepening chasm between the two sides prompted
the World Bank to approach Suu Kyi and the generals about
the conditional aid offer, the International Herald Tribune
reported late last year.
Suu Kyi questioned what the grant would be used for and
the wisdom of giving the generals, who have driven
Myanmar's resource-rich economy into the ground, access to
vast pools of money.
"If an irresponsible government does not use the money for
the benefit of the people but uses it as a means to
perpetuate their hold on power, our country will be in great
distress," Suu Kyi said.
Her opinion was echoed by Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar
scholar from Rutgers University, in a column published in
Bangkok's The Nation newspaper today.
The World Bank "acts as though the military rulers were
rational, reasonable and humane and could be reasoned
with. Sadly they are not," Silverstein wrote, while noting
that
a dialogue must include ethnic minorities, a position Suu
Kyi
has endorsed.
"Sadly too there are international businesses, organizations
and spokesmen ready to defend and enrich the (military
government) members in exchange for economic benefits
which will not help the people or the nation," he wrote.
Myanmar's government has been condemned repeatedly by
the U.N.General Assembly for rampant human rights
violations, including forced labor, torture of dissidents
and
ethnic cleansing campaigns against the country's minorities.