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DASSK getting though



 Suu Kyi Accuses Regime of Forcing Party Leaders to Quit 
 With BC-Burma-Name Wars 
 By AYE AYE WIN=
 Associated Press Writer=
   RANGOON, Burma (AP) _ Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
staged a defiant rally against the military regime Saturday,
telling about 4,000 supporters that the government had coerced
leading members of her party to resign.
   Scandinavian and Swiss diplomats demanded an independent autopsy
on James Leander Nichols, a former honorary consul and friend of
Suu Kyi who died in prison last week of a reported stroke.
   Since the government rounded up 262 members of Suu Kyi's
National League for Democracy last month to prevent a congress, at
least 14 have officially resigned from her party and as members of
the parliament elected in 1990 but never allowed to convene.
   Speaking at the gates of her Rangoon home _ virtually the only
opposition activity allowed by the State Law and Order Restoration
Council, or SLORC _ Suu Kyi said the regime sent intelligence
agents to the homes of recently freed detainees.
   ``Pressuring the MPs to resign from the NLD at their homes is
much better than placing them under detention and forcing them to
resign,'' Suu Kyi said sarcastically. ``But asking these people to
resign their posts is not nice.''
   Winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent
promotion of democracy, Suu Kyi was freed from six years of house
arrest last July and has recently stepped up her battle of wills
with the SLORC.
   The government staged mass arrests last month to derail a party
conference she called to bring together the pro-democracy
candidates who won the 1990 election. Only 18 eluded arrest and
appeared, but the regime suffered a public relations disaster.
   Senior government officials say that nearly all the detainees
have since been freed. Suu Kyi's party says that 64 are unaccounted
for.
   Meantime, diplomats from Denmark, Norway, Finland and
Switzerland met a Burmese foreign ministry official Friday and
demanded an explanation of Nichols' death, said Danish Ambassador
to Thailand Joergen Reimers.
   ``We got an oral report on how many times he had been seen by a
doctor, according to prison regulations, and so on,'' Reimers said.
``We asked whether an autopsy had been performed, and we didn't get
a very clear answer.''
   Reimers asked for an independent autopsy conducted by a Danish
surgeons' group working on human-rights cases. The official seemed
``surprised that I had brought it up,'' Reimers said. No official
reply had been made by late Saturday.
   Nichols, 65, a businessman of Greek and Burmese descent,
represented the Scandinavian countries and Switzerland as an
honorary consul until 1978 and later in an unofficial capacity.
   Known to suffer from diabetes and heart trouble, he was arrested
in April and sentenced to three years in prison for the illegal
possession of two fax machines and a telephone switchboard. But his
family feels he was punished for his links to Suu Kyi.
   Suu Kyi attended a small Buddhist memorial service for Nichols.
A Christian service diplomats planned to attend Sunday was
postponed due to the unavailability of church, diplomatic sources
said. It could be held next week.
   Denmark, one of the countries Nichols represented, is pushing
the European Union to coordinate with the United States and impose
economic sanctions against Burma.
   U.S. Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor said Friday during a visit
to Thailand that economic sanctions could be effective in forcing
Burma to allow more democracy.
   In Copenhagen, a newspaper reported that Danish Prime Minister
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen has invited Suu Kyi to Denmark this fall ``to
send a signal to the dictatorship.'' In the past, she has refused
invitations outside Burma, fearing the SLORC would not allow her to
return.
   The military has ruled Burma since 1962. Suu Kyi, 51, daughter
of independence hero Aung San, emerged as leader of the democracy
movement during protests in 1988 bloodily suppressed by the army.
   
291227 Jun GMT



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                 |     Shimojima Ichiroo      |
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