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Myanmar opposition to write new sta



Myanmar opposition to write new state constitution.

Reuters, Rangoon, 17 September, 2000, 04:20 GMT.  Myanmar's main
opposition  party has  said it will defy the ruling military and draft
a new state constitution to try  to hasten the transition to democracy
in the impoverished country.  About 200 members of the National
League for Democracy (NLD)  agreed at a meeting on Saturday to
ask a party committee to draw up the  constitution under the
guidance of party leaders - Nobel Peace Prize  winner Aung San
Suu Kyi and Aung Shwe.  The meeting, held just two days after
the ending of a de-facto house arrest  of Suu Kyi and other NLD
leaders,  was called to mark the second  anniversary of the founding
of the Committee Representing the People's  Parliament.

The committee, the opposition's proxy parliament, was established to
represent members of parliament elected at Myanmar's last democratic
elections in 1990, which the NLD won by a landslide.

The NLD has never been allowed to govern.

The ruling generals say Myanmar is not ready for democracy and have
arrested many of the MPs elected at the 1990 polls.

Saturday's NLD meeting called on the authorities immediately to convene
a parliament and release all political prisoners.

The NLD move is bound to anger Myanmar's ruling State Peace and
Development Council, which four years ago enacted a law specifically
banning the drawing up of a new state constitution. Any organisation
attempting to draw up such a constitution is liable to be dissolved
and can be declared illegal. Anyone involved in the process is
liable to up to 20 years in prison.

A state-organised convention has been meeting intermittently for years to
draw up a new constitution. The NLD has boycotted its meetings.

NLD sources said all senior party leaders attended Saturday's meeting, as
did U.S., British, German, French, Australian and Japanese diplomats.
Journalists were prevented by the military authorities from attending the
meeting.

Tension between Western governments and Myanmar has increased
recently following a nine-day roadside standoff just outside Yangon
undertaken by Suu Kyi and about a dozen of her colleagues.

The group had been stopped on the road on August 24 and, denied
permission to proceed with their journey to a regional NLD meeting,
refused to return to Yangon.

The confrontation was ended forcibly by the authorities on September 2
when all those involved were taken back to Yangon by armed police.
Most of them were then held inside their homes, out of contact with the
rest of the world for almost two weeks.