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AP: Daw Suu Will Proceed the Forum



 DAW SUU WILL PROCEED THE FORUM

  By AYE AYE WIN
 Associated Press Writer
   RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said today
she will hold her regular weekend meeting with supporters at the gates of
her home, in defiance of a ban by Burma's military regime.
   Through a supporter, Suu Kyi issued a message to reporters saying, "I
will proceed with the Saturday lecture as usual."
   There was no sign how the ruling junta would respond to the challenge
from Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent
efforts to bring democracy to Burma, also known as Myanmar.
   The ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council said this week that
Suu Kyi's meetings would be banned starting Saturday because her National
League for Democracy had abused the leniency of the government,
   Japan, one of Burma's main foreign investors, urged the junta to allow
the meeting. Ambassador Yoichi Yamaguchi told Burmese foreign ministry
officials Thursday that political parties should be allowed to operate
freely. Officials in Tokyo said there was no response.
   The ban will deprive Burmese of practically their only contact with Suu
Kyi, whom the regime held under house arrest for six years until freeing
her in July. Thousands of people have braved arrest each week to hear her
talk. Others around the country listen to clandestine tapes made at the
meetings.
   Authorities have several options for enforcing the ban, which was not
officially announced in today's press. They could stop the meeting by
blocking roads to Suu Kyi's house with barricades and barbed wire, a tactic
used in the past. Or they could allow it to proceed and arrest the leaders
for violating the law -- a more dangerous situation that could provoke
riots.
   The meetings are technically illegal, violating a government ban on
political gatherings of more than 50 people. Violators can be punished by
two years in prison.
   Starting with about 400 people after Suu Kyi's release, the meetings
swelled to 2,000 after her party walked out of a government-stacked panel
drafting a new constitution.
   But the ban didn't come until attendance swelled to up to 10,000 people,
after Suu Kyi held a party congress last month despite the junta's arrests
of 262 people to prevent it.
   Criticized internationally for the mass arrests, the regime has staged
larger pro-government rallies around the country. Participants at one said
they were coerced into attending.
   The opposition reported today that 154 detainees from the recent roundup
had been freed. The whereabouts of the rest were unknown, though about 20
are believed to have been transferred to Insein prison near Rangoon,
notorious for torture.
   Meanwhile, the state-controlled press warned Suu Kyi's party not to
press ahead with plans to draft an alternate constitution, saying such
actions would "make it an unlawful association without fail."
   "Members of the unlawful association will not be called in for
questioning at the guest houses as was recently done and given clean white
bedsheets and treated as guests of honor," said one article.
   Suu Kyi's party congress adopted resolutions calling on the military to
turn over power to the overwhelmingly pro-democratic Parliament elected in
1990. The regime never honored the elections, and the congress was to bring
together surviving candidates on the sixth anniversary of the vote.
   The military has ruled Burma since 1962. Suu Kyi, daughter of
independence hero Aung San, emerged as the leader of the opposition during
pro-democracy demonstrations in 1988 bloodily suppressed by the army.
AP   
KT
ISBDA