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What NCGUB's U Maung2 Aye Adviced A



Subject: What NCGUB's U Maung2 Aye Adviced ASEAN 7 Years Ago

Agence France Presse

                                October  15, 1991


HEADLINE: World's top companies accused of propping up Burmese junta


    Scores of Western companies, including drinks giant Pepsi Cola, were accused
Tuesday of helping to prop up Burma's ruling

   The attack came from Burma's jungle-based parallel government, forced to flee
Rangoon after the military began arresting and imprisoning members of the
National League for Democracy (NLD), the country's major party and clear winners
of the 1990 elections. 
   The charges came the day after the NLD's imprisoned leader, Aung San Suu Kyi,
won the Nobel Peace Prize.

   "The investment these companies put into Burma is not used for the people of 
Burma," said Maung Maung Aye, minister of trade in the National Coalition
Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB).

   "All investment is used solely for the pupose of expanding the army and
buying weapons," he said.

   Major companies involved include ten oil companies, among them Amoco and
Unocal from the United States, BHP Petroleum from Australia and the Anglo-Dutch 
Shell.

   All the oil companies paid the regime millions of dollars under
production-sharing agreements in 1989.

   The NCGUB was formed by members of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy (NLD) last year in territory controlled by Karen ethnic minority
guerrillas near the border with Thailand.

   All members of the NCGUB won seats in the May 1990 elections when the NLD won
more than 80 percent of the vote.

   The military regime, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC), has refused to accept the election result and hand over power.

   Maung Maung Aye also said Asian companies, particularly ones from the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Thailand, Malaysia and
Singapore, were propping up the regime which international human rights groups
have said is responsible for a reign of terror in Burma.

   "We have to try to make these ASEAN people understand that the democratic
cause is for the people of Burma," he said.

   Maung Maung Aye said the parallel government had sent letters to companies
investing in Burma in an attempt to persuade them to withdraw their investments.

   "We have had good responses from some of them," he said without elaborating. 

   Members of the parallel government said they hoped the awarding of the Nobel 
prize to Aung San Suu Kyi would give their cause much needed international
attention and sympathy. 1991 Agence France Presse, October 15, 1991

                                                                                
    Sein Win,  the prime minister of the NCGUB, is currently lobbying for
support for his parallel government at the United Nations General Assembly in
New York.