NEWS - Myanmar Threatens Thailand R

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Subject: NEWS - Myanmar Threatens Thailand Rift

Myanmar Threatens Thailand Rift

 .c The Associated Press

 BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar warned on Wednesday that relations
with Thailand could be harmed if Bangkok does not tighten security at
its refugee camps.

The warning came after dissidents took 38 hostages at the Myanmar
embassy in Bangkok.

``It is time for Thailand to shoulder the responsibility, to stop and
think that this could very well lead to some adverse effects on
bilateral relations between Thailand and Myanmar,'' said an editorial in
the state-run New Light of Myanmar daily.

The Thai government, which let the embassy captors go free on grounds
that they were ``student activists struggling for democracy,'' resolved
Wednesday to tighten embassy security and impose stricter controls on
Myanmar exiles.

Five rebels stormed the embassy on Friday with AK-47s concealed in a
guitar case and took the hostages. They were released 26 hours later,
when Thai authorities agreed to give the rebels safe passage by
helicopter back to the border with Myanmar, also known as Burma.

At least two former student dissidents at the Maneeloy holding center
for asylum-seekers from Myanmar, near the border with Myanmar in the
Thai province of Ratchaburi, are believed by Thai authorities to have
been among the five at the embassy.

The identity of the others was unclear. Thai media have reported that
they include at least one dissident involved in the hijacking of an
airplane on a domestic flight in Myanmar in 1989 and who has served jail
time in Thailand.

The New Light editorial claimed that most of the 24 camps inside the
Thai border were sheltering armed insurgents and anti-Yangon terrorists
fighting ``under the mask of democracy.''

A meeting of Thailand's anti-terrorism committee concluded that poor
intelligence on the activities of dissidents from Myanmar and weak
security at the Yangon mission in Bangkok were to blame for the
hostage-taking.

``There will be improvement in the system controlling the students. In
every refugee camp around the country the rules will be stricter,''
Interior Minister Sanan Kachornprasart said after the meeting.

An estimated 3,000 students from Myanmar have sought refuge in Thailand.
They were at the forefront of the democracy movement in their homeland.

A popular uprising for civilian government in Myanmar was crushed in
1988 at the cost of more than 3,000 lives.

AP-NY-10-06-99