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Get tough on Myanmar, says Italian



Subject: Get tough on Myanmar, says Italian leftist chief 

Get tough on Myanmar, says Italian leftist chief
10:46 a.m. Jan 13, 1999 Eastern
By Abigail Levene

ROME, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Italian leftist leader Walter Veltroni, fresh from
visiting Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, urged the international
community on Wednesday to get tough with the Asian state's military rulers.

``We won't abandon Aung San Suu Kyi. We won't abandon the pro-democracy
activists who are fighting to regain their lost freedom,'' an impassioned
Veltroni told a news conference.

``The international community must do all in its power to step up
its...opposition to the military junta.''

Veltroni, a former deputy prime minister who leads the largest party in
Italy's ruling centre-left coalition, the ex-communist Democrats of the
Left, unveiled a campaign to ``create international solidarity with Suu
Kyi's struggle for peace, human rights and the reinstatement of democracy.''

The National League for Democracy, led by 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu
Kyi, triumphed in the former Burma's last election in 1990 but was never
allowed to take office.

Suu Kyi is forced to live in semi-isolation at her home in Yangon, where the
Italian delegation met her last week.

A United Nations report released last October accused the Myanmar military
government of persistent human rights violations, ranging from torture of
prisoners and forced labour to the monitoring of opposition political
parties.

Veltroni said the conditions in the Asian state were shocking to Western
eyes, with universities shut, forced labour and illiteracy rampant, and
small children at work.

``We saw a country suffering from problems we hoped never to see at the end
of the century, at the end of the millennium,'' he told reporters at the
Foreign Press Association.

Veltroni said Suu Kyi was constantly vilified in the government-owned
Myanmar media but was determined to stay in her country despite threats to
deport her.

Last October the European Union voiced concern at Myanmar's failure to
promote democracy and human rights and tightened sanctions on Myanmar, which
became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in
1997.

Veltroni said he favoured sanctions but the EU must take a tougher line
against Myanmar's rulers, who had received ``a shot of oxygen'' from their

acceptance into ASEAN.

``It is very important that the EU, in its relations with ASEAN, stresses
that there is no place for a regime that violates the most basic human
rights.''

Veltroni urged Italian politicians to focus on weighty international issues
like Myanmar instead of trivial domestic problems, and citizens to support
the democracy movement, even if that meant just wearing a badge with a
picture of Suu Kyi.

``We who live in the rich, opulent West, who can spend weeks discussing a TV
programme, must remember that there are more serious problems in the
world.''