October 4, 2007
Myanmar Junta Ready for Reconciliation Talks
Yangon
Myanmar's junta Thursday announced that it was ready to start
reconciliation talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi if she
would stop her "confrontation" tactics and support of sanctions
against the country.
A state-run television broadcast Thursday night said Senior General
Than Shwe, who heads the junta, had made these conditions known to
visiting United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari.
Gambari's visit to Myanmar, which ended Tuesday, included separate
meetings with Than Shwe and Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize
laureate who has spent the past four years under house arrest in
Yangon.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has suggested in New York that
Gambari's trip was far from successful, casting doubt on the Myanmar
TV announcement which may be designed to cast blame for failed
negotiations on Suu Kyi, analysts said.
Gambari was sent to Myanmar to assess the country's political
situation in the aftermath of a brutal crackdown on peaceful
monk-led protests in Yangon against the military's 45-year reign in
the country.
The crackdown sparked international condemnation, even from
Myanmar's Southeast Asian allies, and calls for renewed efforts to
force a political resolution to Myanmar's political stalemate, which
has pitted an entrenched military regime against the forces of
democracy for the past 17 years.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) Party won the 1990
general election by a landslide, but has been blocked from power
since by the military who claimed Myanmar was not ready for civilian
rule because of its security threat from ethnic minority
insurgencies.
In 1995, the regime began to draft a new constitution to address the
country's power-sharing issues, but the military-controlled process
was dubbed a sham by the NLD and most western observers, who claimed
it was designed to keep the generals in power indefinitely.
The National Convention process to draft the principles for a new
constitution was wrapped up on Aug 20.
The conclusion to the 14-year-old efforts was swiftly overshadowed
by a groundswell of protests against the doubling of fuel prices
imposed on Aug 15.
The anti-inflation protests were picked up by Myanmar's
400,000-strong monkhood in early September and grew into a barefoot
Buddhist rebellion that shook Yangon between Sep 18 and 27.
The peaceful movement was extinguished by a brutal crackdown on Sep
26-27 that left 10 dead, according to government sources. The actual
death toll is believed to be much higher.
Since last week's crackdown, thousands of dissidents have been
arrested.
In the same broadcast announcing its terms for talks with Suu Kyi,
Myanmar public TV claimed that of the 2,093 arrested, some 692 had
already been released.
Nearly all Western governments and multinational donors ended their
aid programmes to Myanmar in 1988, after the army's brutal
suppression of a pro-democracy movement that year that left an
estimated 3,000 dead.
The US later imposed sanctions against US companies, prohibiting
them from doing business with Myanmar.
The European Union has imposed visa sanctions against the junta's
leaders but stopped short of stopping their companies from doing
business in the country.
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