Danes in high gear

[ider@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Angry Danes to take Burma sanctions call to U.S.
    By Steve Weizman
    COPENHAGEN, June 28 (Reuter) - Danish Foreign Minister Niels
Helveg Petersen will seek U.S. support for sanctions against
Burma's military government when he visits Washington next
month, an aide said on Friday.
    Stung by the death in a Rangoon jail of honorary consul
James Leander (Leo) Nichols, who represented Denmark among four
European countries, Petersen has said that he will also ask for
EU sanctions at a July 13 European foreign ministers' meeting.
    "We've seen signs of an opening in Washington and we think
this is a good time to raise the issue," the aide told Reuters,
adding that Petersen was scheduled to meet Secretary of State
Warren Christopher on July 11.
    U.S. Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor said on Friday that
economic sanctions against Burma could help pressure the
country's military leaders into easing their clampdown on the
country's pro-democracy meovement.
    "There are times when economic restrictions done in an
appropriate fashion...can be very helpful," Kantor told
reporters during a visit to Thailand.
    "This regime in Burma has cracked down on democratic freedom
of association and pluralism and on democratic institutions, and
we're concerned," he said.
    On Thursday, a U.S. Senate committee approved a foreign aid
bill requiring economic restrictions on Burma.
    Anglo-Burmese Nichols, 65, a businessman and honorary consul
for Norway and representative for Denmark, Finland and
Switzerland, died last Saturday in Rangoon's Insein jail, where
he was beginning a three-year jail term for operating a
telephone and fax from his home without authorisation.
    Diplomats and the Burmese opposition believe he was jailed
because of his support for his goddaughter, pro-democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy.
    Suu Kyi and the Danish ambassador to Thailand and Burma,
Joergen Reimers, were among about 30 people who attended a
Buddhist ceremony to honour Nichols on Friday. A church service
is planned for next weekend.
    Reimers and European diplomats based in Bangkok and
Singapore are in Burma to investigate Nichols's death.
    They have requested a formal explanation from the ruling
State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) by Monday and if
the SLORC fails to respond, the European countries plan further
action, one of the diplomats said, without giving more details.
    Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Friday
joined human rights organisations in saying that prison
conditions were likely to have hastened Nichols's death.
    "Conditions at Insein jail are notoriously bad and Mr
Nichols was an elderly man not in the best of health," Downer
said in a statement.
    "The political nature of his arrest, the harshness of his
sentence and the conditions of his incarceration lead me to
renew calls for the government of Burma to reform its human
rights practices," Downer added.
    The powerful Danish blue collar unions' group LO said on
Friday that it had won support for sanctions from other European
labour organisations and Danish travel agents said they had
stopped promoting tours to Burma.
 REUTER
1719 280696 GMT