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SCMP: EU team slips out amid secrec



Subject: SCMP: EU team slips out amid secrecy over sensitive talks 

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South China Morning Post

Friday, July 9, 1999 

BURMA 

EU team slips out amid secrecy over sensitive talks 

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Bangkok 
A European Union mission has slipped out of Burma, leaving few clues as to 
the success of its effort to reopen a human rights dialogue with the junta, 
envoys said yesterday. 
Secrecy surrounds the two days of sensitive talks which saw the four-man 
team - representing Finland, Portugal, the EU secretariat and the European 
Commission - meet powerful junta First Secretary Khin Nyunt and opposition 
leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi. 
Diplomats said the team would also propose talks between the military 
authorities and Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, 
which won the 1990 elections only to be denied power by the junta. 
"They wish first to report to the EU working committee and they don't want 
to jump the gun, so to speak," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Tauno Kaaria 
said. 
A British diplomat in Rangoon said: "The atmosphere was cordial and there 
was an exchange of information on both sides." 
But she said any more details of the success or failure of the mission 
could take "a long time" to come back from the working committee in 
Brussels. 
A media blackout of the meetings has been imposed in Burma, with no 
coverage in the newspapers and no comment from officials. 
Political dialogue between the junta and the EU has been on ice since the 
EU imposed sanctions in 1996. 
Seven Burmese soldiers were killed and 12 wounded in a clash with ethnic 
Karen rebel troops near the Thai border, Thai border police said. 



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