Myanmar-SuuKyi-Australia

[euburma@xxxxxxxxx]

Myanmar-SuuKyi-Australia
   Australia urges Yangon to give Suu Kyi's husband a visa
   
   SYDNEY, March 20 (AFP) - Australia has joined an international pressure on 
Myanmar's junta to allow the dying husband of opposition leader Aung San Suu 
Kyi into the country to see his wife. 
   Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said it was "hardly an unreasonable 
proposition" to allow Aung San Suu Kyi's British husband Michael Aris into
the 
country on humanitarian grounds.
   "All we can do realistically is demonstrate that the international 
community thinks in the interest of humanity that Dr Aris should be able to 
get to Rangoon (Yangon) and to see his wife," Downer told ABC television late 
Friday.
   "That after all is hardly an unreasonable proposition." 
   Aris is suffering from prostate cancer which has spread to his spine and 
lungs, and is not expected to live long. 
   Myanmar's military government has for the past three years denied Aris a 
visa to visit his wife. 
   Aung San Suu Kyi has said she would be reluctant to leave the country 
because the regime has in the past threatened to expel her.
   Aris, a professor at Oxford University, and Suu Kyi were married in 1972. 
They lived in Bhutan before returning to Oxford before the birth of their two 
sons.
   Her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory 
in elections in 1990, but the government has refused to hand over power and 
has conducted a long campaign against the party.

Thida (Thin Myat Thu)                 http://www.communique.no/dvb/
Coordinator, DVB Web Page                     Tel: +47 22 41 41 43
Democratic Voice of Burma                     Fax: +47 22 41 39 29

          P.O Box 6720, ST.Olavs Plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway