The BurmaNet News: March 18, 1999

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------------------------ BurmaNet ------------------------
"Appropriate Information Technologies, Practical Strategies"
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The BurmaNet News: March 18, 1999
Issue #1230

HEADLINES:
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THE NATION: SUU KYI HUSBAND GRAVELY ILL 
THE NATION: MILITARY GIVES ITSELF ROOMS FOR PROFIT 
SCMP: LOBBYISTS RESIGNS AS JUNTA FAILS TO PAY UP 
SCMP: CONFERENCE SET UP TO EXPOSE LANDMINE MENACE 
THE NATION: FRENCH TEAM TO SUBMIT YADANA REPORT 
BKK POST: PTT TO DEFER B24B GAS PAYMENT 
THE NATION: JUNTA SINKS BID FOR JOINT PATROLS 
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REUTERS: SUU KYI HUSBAND GRAVELY ILL, SEEKING MYANMAR VISA
17 March, 1999 

BANGKOK, March 17 (Reuters) - The British husband of Myanmar opposition
leader Aung San Suu Kyi is gravely ill with cancer and seeking a visa from
Yangon's military government to visit his wife, sources close to the family
said on Wednesday.

The sources, who did not want to be identified by name, said academic
Michael Aris was suffering from prostate cancer that had spread to his
spine and lungs and was not expected to live long. 

The Yangon government, which is eager to see Suu Kyi leave the country, has
refused to issue Aris a visa for the past three years. 

The sources said negotiations to issue a visa to Aris, who was in hospital
in Britain, were continuing but Yangon had indicated Suu Kyi should be the
one to travel. 

"They have said that it is for the sick person to be visited," one of the
sources said, adding that it was unlikely Suu Kyi would leave Myanmar as
she did not believe she would be allowed to return. 

The spokesman for the Yangon government could not immediately be reached
for comment. 

The source said Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the United Nations
and the Sultan of Brunei had made appeals to the Myanmar government to
grant Aris a visa. 

"Michael is not expected to survive," said another of the sources. "He is
desperate to get in to see her to say goodbye for the last time. But he
would have to be accompanied by a nurse and might not even survive the
journey."

At the moment, the other source said, Aris was not fit enough to travel. 

"The prognosis is not good. The cancer has spread into the spine and lungs.
He's undergoing therapy in hospital. There are negotiations going on for a
possible visa. 

"It seems unlikely the visa will be granted, but this would be a golden
opportunity for the (Myanmar) government to display a humanitarian
gesture," he said.

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THE NATION: BURMA MILITARY GIVES ITSELF ROOMS FOR PROFIT
17 March, 1999

It is compulsory for top military officers in Burma to have a share in all
businesses. Each share by them is only in name for they do not need to put
in any cash.

After the completion of a project, the military officers ask for their
share of the profits not knowing whether that project gain benefits or not.

Two different kinds of hotels have to be registered. One kind is for
foreigners and the other for locals. Hotels that cater to foreigners have
to pay tax in American dollars or FEC.


When a foreigner registers at a hotel, he or she is first asked the
following four questions. 1: State your occupation. 2: Which places do you
intend to visit. 3: How long will you stay. 4: Do you intend to go to
University Avenue.

The hotel proprietor has to watch and gather information and then pass on
the facts to the MIS (military intelligence service) until the foreigner
departs.

The military officers always ask for their shares of profits from such
hotels in which they are shareholders in name only. In reality, all the
hotels are almost empty of visitors.

The taxis have to make two licences and they, too, have to give details
about the visitors to the MIS.

The military government, instead of promoting the hotel and tourism
business, is urging the hotel proprietors and taxi drivers to act as unpaid
informers for them.

Thet Oo
Washington D C

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SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: LOBBYISTS RESIGN AS JUNTA FAILS TO PAY UP
17 March, 1999 by William Barnes 

Washington lobbyists paid to polish Burma's international image have quit
after the junta stopped paying their bills.

Jefferson Waterman International confirmed it had stopped acting for Burma
because of "non-payment". Bain and Associates also said Burma was no longer
a client.

The companies - paid by Burmese firms fronting for the Government - were
hired soon after Burma gained membership of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (Asean) in mid-1997.

The junta appeared to feel that having persuaded Asean to turn a blind eye
to its failings, the West might be induced to do the same.

However, the Government's pariah status has not changed much. It suffered
an ignominious snub last month when most Western nations boycotted
Interpol's annual drugs conference because it was held in Rangoon.

Former US assistant secretary of state for narcotics Ann Wrobleski and her
firm, Jefferson Waterman, were paid US$500,000 (HK$3.9 million). While a US
official, Ms Wrobleski supported a 1989 ban on anti-narcotics aid to Burma,
arguing that if Rangoon was to tackle the drugs menace it needed "a
government enjoying greater credibility and support among the Burmese people".

A former TV journalist, Jackson Bain was hired for nearly US$250,000. Mr
Bain told the Washington Post that Burma was "not ready for prime time" but
said he enjoyed the challenge of trying to present a fuller picture.

A third firm, the Atlantic Group, was paid to try to overturn US sanctions.

Soon after US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright savaged Burma at an
August 1997 meeting of Asean, Mr Bain told his employers that he was
"actively cultivating" reporters and editors.

Both Jefferson Waterman and Bain and Associates offered reporters Burmese
trips.

Critics have seen the hand of experts in such silky rebuttals as the
Government's letter claiming that a recent South China Morning Post article
was guilty of "egregious misrepresentation".

Burmese generals are mostly dull plodders thanks to a military code that
values loyalty above all other virtues. But some soldiers with flair have
started to make an impact in recent years.


The US-educated soldier-turned-diplomat Win Aung replaced the sometimes
prickly Ohn Gyaw as Foreign Minister late last year.

Mr Win Aung says the military has been weak in explaining the "real
situation".

Yet he has changed little: European Union countries cited zero progress on
Burmese political reform and human rights when they refused to meet Asean
ministers this month as long as Burma insisted on sitting in.

The director of the Open Society Institute's Burma Project, Maureen
Aung-thwin, said: "The Asean argument that membership of the association
would make Burma more liberal appears to have backfired."

She said the Government's only interest was in changing its image.

She argued that if Burma was gaining in the public relations stakes it was
because there was no way to go but up. "Even so, they sound ridiculous when
they claim in government-owned newspapers that people in Burma live
'happily without repression, fear and anxiety'," she said.

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SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: CONFERENCE SET TO EXPOSE BURMA'S LANDMINE MENACE
16 March, 1999 by Arshad Mahmud in Dhaka

Sabbir Ahmed is the latest casualty of what has become a major threat to
Bangladeshis along the Burmese border - landmines.

Planted by the Burmese military to prevent tribal rebels crossing into
Burma, they are a menace of which the outside world has until now appeared
ignorant.

That is about to be rectified, with an international conference in Dhaka
this week expected to focus on the plight of landmine victims in the area.

Sabbir, a 35-year-old logger from the Bangladeshi border village of
Valukia, stepped on a landmine on February 10 just across the border near
Naikhangchari. He bled to death a few hours later.

The attention of the authorities in Bangladesh was first drawn to the
menace in 1993, when two Bangladeshis were killed by an explosion in the
no-man's-land along the border.

Shaken by the incident, the authorities contacted their Burmese
counterparts, who admitted to having planted the mines along a large swathe
of the border to deter incursions by Rohingya rebels.

A large number of Rohingyas - a Muslim minority in Burma - fled to
Bangladesh in the face of severe persecution by the Burmese military in the
early 1990s.

According to a survey carried out by the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles,
Burma has planted mines along a 55km stretch of the border.

In the five years since the first casualties, more than 50 people have died
and more than 100 others have been injured, many of them permanently crippled.

The victims have included loggers, villagers and members of the border
security forces on both sides. Twenty-two wild elephants have also
reportedly been killed by mines.

"Thirteen people, including one of my troops, were killed in just two years
in 34 explosions since I came here in September 1996," said
Lieutenant-Colonel Zahiruddin Mohammad Babar, the local Bangladesh Rifles
commander.

As casualties have soared, Bangladesh has pressed for the removal of the
mines, which Dhaka has denounced as a flagrant violation of the Geneva
Convention.


Although the Burmese agreed to remove the mines, progress so far has been
slow.

"We're under constant threat but it seems there's no remedy in sight," said
Jainal Abedin, 20, of the village of Dargah Bil, who lost his right leg two
years ago in an explosion in which two companions were killed.

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THE NATION: FRENCH TEAM TO SUBMIT YADANA REPORT SOON
17 March, 1999 by Yindee Lertcharoenchok

A TEAM of French parliamentarians said on Tuesday they could not yet
confirm if there had been human-rights abuses in the controversial
multi-billion- dollar Yadana natural-gas project.

But they said all information they had acquired or been given during their
trip to Burma and Thailand as well as back in France would be collated,
studied and assessed before being summarised in a fact-finding report to
the French parliament in June.

The three-member ad-hoc committee was created last October to investigate
the widely debated conduct of French oil companies in overseas investment.
In the past few years French petroleum firms have been strongly criticised
for making investment deals with authoritarian regimes in the Third World.
Their projects have often been alleged to contribute or to be related to
serious human-rights violations, forced labour and relocation and
destruction of the environment.

Although the MPs did not have a chance to hold a face-to-face meeting here
with Karen, Mon and Tavoyan refugees, tens of thousands of whom were
uprooted from their villages in southern Burma along the route of the
Yadana gas pipeline, they said they would ''use discretion'' in their
judgment and assessment.

''We are not going to believe everything we saw or were told. We'll use our
discretion as well. We'll check if information we gathered from all sources
matchs or not so that we can present a very neutral report,'' said Pierre
Brana of the Socialist Party.

Last week the team, which included Marie Helene Aubert of the Green Party
and Roland Blum of the Liberal Democracy party, spent three days in Burma
touring the Yadana pipeline route and neighbouring villages and meeting
senior Burmese officials, representatives of the French oil giant Total,
some Rangoon-based diplomats and Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu
Kyi and her political colleagues. They spent three more days in Thailand
talking to people and groups involved in the Yadana project.

Total, its American partner Unocal, Thailand's Petroleum Authority of
Thailand and Burma's Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise are partners in the
US$1.2-billion Yadana project.

Blum said it was still unclear if income from the Yadana would allow the
Burmese junta to stay in power, saying that it would be another two years
before there would be any payment.

Brana said the final report would contain information that could be proved
but that the committee was not duty-bound to dictate what the government
should do with its findings.

However, the judiciary, the legislature and international financial
institutions such as the World Bank may use the report to initiate action.


For example, French politicians could use the findings to propose a review
or amendment of existing French business laws to include economic
sanctions, Brana conjectured.

He said that unlike in many Western countries, existing French law did not
have the power of economic sanctions, but once it was armed with sanctions
it would have indiscriminate effect.

''Unlike some major powers, if we enact sanctions laws they will have a
blanket effect and be indiscriminately applied,'' he said, mocking some
Western powers which had discriminately imposed sanctions on Burma while
pursuing a different policy towards China, which had been widely criticised
for its poor human-rights record.

The three French MPs said that what they found ''absolutely unacceptable''
in Burma was the fact that the legislature elected in the 1990 general
elections was not allowed to perform its duties.

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BANGKOK POST: PTT URGES CONSORTIUM TO DEFER B24B GAS PAYMENT
17 March, 1999 by Preecha Srisathan

Kanchanaburi

Egat blamed for slow work on turbine

The Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT) has been negotiating with the
consortium operating the Yadana gas field in Burma to defer an overdue
payment of US$65 million, or about 24 billion baht, for gas delivery not
yet taken, said a PTT senior executive.

The payment covered the amount of gas accumulated over the six months since
the agreed date of delivery on July 1 last year, said Piti Yimprasert,
president of PTT Gas.

PTT was contractually obligated to receive 65 million cubic feet per day
(mcfd) of gas in the initial stage, rising to 525 mcfd over 15 months after
production start-up on July 1 but it was able to receive only five mcfd.

Mr Piti blamed the delay on the Electricity Generating Authority of
Thailand's inability to finish installing a gas turbine at its large power
plant in Ratchaburi. The plant was to be the sole consumer of Yadana gas in
the initial stage.

So far, Egat has not shown eagerness to complete the plant soon because of
lower demand for electricity as a result of the economic bubble that burst
over a year ago.

Egat has not signed a gas purchase contract with PTT. Consequently, PTT is
left with the burden of paying for the gas not yet taken because of the
take- or-pay clause in its contract with the Yadana consortium.

However, PTT will attempt to ask for a deferment of the payment by citing
force majeure (an act of god) for its failure to take the gas as a result
of the economic crisis which severely affected its financial status.

Mr Piti said the negotiations with the consortium, led by Total, the French
oil firm, must be concluded this month. If no agreement was reached, the
consortium could resort to legal action against PTT, Mr Piti added.

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THE NATION: JUNTA SINKS BID FOR JOINT NAVY PATROLS TO END CLASHES
17 March, 1999 by Don Pathan

PHUKET - Burma has rejected Thailand's proposal that both countries jointly
patrol the disputed sea territory which was the scene of several violent
and fatal naval clashes in recent months, a Thai military officer said on
Tuesday.


The officer, who asked not to be named, said the refusal was conveyed to
Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai during the visit to Thailand last week of
Burmese junta leader Gen Than Shwe.

The Burmese regime was concerned that joint Thai-Burmese naval patrols
could send a wrong signal to the armed forces of neighbouring countries,
added the officer.

A senior Burmese commander on Tuesday played down the naval clashes, which
had ended with casualties on both sides, as a minor issue that can be
overcome.

Both countries should focus on confidence-building measures, said Maj-Gen
Thien Sein, chief commander of the Coastal Region who headed a Burmese
delegation to a two-day meeting with his Thai counterpart.

''All these incidents happened because we do not have a settlement on the
demarcation process,'' said Thien Sein. Establishing a mechanism to
demarcate the sea and land boundary would have to be agreed upon by higher
authorities, he added.

The Regional Border Committee, a joint Thai-Burmese panel that meets
regularly to discuss and resolve bilateral disputes and conflicts, is
currently holding talks to resolve the latest violent naval conflicts and
border demarcation. The Thai side is headed by Lt-Gen Thaweep
Suwannasingha, the commander of the Army's First Region.

According to the Thai officer, Thailand had proposed that an imaginary
boundary be established so that both navies would have something to work
with. Thailand also suggested a regular exchange of visits by naval ships.

The Burmese delegation agreed to look into the idea of establishing an
imaginary line but was not in favour of the idea of an exchange of visits
by naval ships.

The Burmese agreed to do their utmost to prevent armed fishing boats from
entering the disputed area and all vessels would be required to raise the
flag of their respective countries, the source said.

Burma has agreed to forward a request to its fisheries department that a
concession fee charged from Thai fishing companies be reduced.

On the issue of border trade, Thailand proposed that the temporary crossing
point at the Three Pagodas Pass in Kanchanaburi province be upgraded to a
permanent one to facilitate growing border trade. The Burmese delegation
suggested that the idea be discussed at the next meeting of the Joint
Commission, headed by foreign ministers of the two countries, in Rangoon.

On the issue of counter-narcotics, Thien Sein suggested that there be more
exchange of information between the two militaries with regard to
trafficking and production locations.

''The problem is that they are unable to eliminate the insurgents,'' said
Thaweep. ''If they can eliminate them the drug problem will improve.''
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