[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

U.S to protest arm sales to Burma




	 March 23, 1994 -- U.S. To protest re: Burma Arms Sales

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The United States is set to protest
arms sales by China and three other countries known to be arming
Burma's ruling military junta, administration officials said
Wednesday.
	 The State Department is preparing to make official
diplomatic protests to Singapore, Portugal and Poland as well as
to China on the shipments, they said.
	 The planned diplomatic protests are expected to be ready
''very soon,'' an official who follows Burma said. They are part
of a stepped-up drive to end what the United States regards as
brutal suppression of human rights by the junta, which calls
itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC.
	 The strategy is the result of a Clinton administration 
review approved at an inter-agency meeting of senior
policymakers on March 10. It is aimed at winning the
unconditional release of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu
Kyi and forcing the SLORC to open talks with her political
party.
	 Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, is in her
fifth year of house arrrest in Rangoon, the Burmese capital. 
Her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in
elections in 1990, but the military voided the vote.
	 China is by far the biggest arms supplier to the Burmese
military. U.S. officials do not expect their overtures to
Beijing to make much headway, especially in light of strains
over U.S. criticism of China's human rights record.
	 Washington does not plan to make a big deal of Burma with
Beijing because of more pressing business, including getting it
to go along with the U.S. strategy for forcing North Korea to
allow full inspection of its nuclear program.
	 Instead, the plan is to focus on the smaller suppliers to
boost the junta's international isolation and pressure it to
ease repression.
	 ``It's a matter of working on the margins where we can,''
one official said. ``It  is a government that, controlled by the
military, is using these guns and bullets to oppress the Burmese
people and prosecute a civil war on the ethnic groups.''
	 Singapore has told the United States it would halt arms
sales to Burma if the United Nations sponsored an international
arms embargo. In the absence of a worldwide embargo, it fears
another supplier would simply step in if it stopped. Poland and
Portugal have let it be known that any arms shipments to Burma
are in violation of stated government policy, officials said.
	 The Clinton administration also plans to boost efforts to
persuade the U.N. Secretary General to name a special envoy to
press the military to start a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi. It
has decided to defer a decision on sending an ambassador to
Rangoon until a later date.