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Chavalit Calls Special Meeting To Resolve All Pipeline Issues
(Business Day)
PRIME Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh has called a meeting of key
individuals and groups concerned with the construction of the Yadana gas
pipeline project in an effort to move the project forward to completion
by the deadline and to resolve all outstanding issues, a well informed
source told Business Day.
The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday and will be chaired by the prime
minister.
Much is at stake in completing the project on time. Thailand has agreed
to receive 525 million cubic feet of gas per day from the Yadana field
and an additional 200 million cubic feet from the Yetagun field
beginning on 1 July 1998.
Meanwhile, Myanmar has already completed about 90 percent of the
pipeline project on its side. The 63 km pipeline on the Myanmar side has
already reached the Thai border at Etong village.
Under the agreement between the two countries, Myanmar will receive
about 43.5 million baht per day or about 15.9 billion baht per year, an
amount which would contribute substantially to its foreign exchange
earnings.
The benefits to Thailand are derived from having access to a relatively
low-cost fuel for generating electrical power.
The 725 million cubic feet per day supply from the Yadana field and the
Yetagun field will be used to fuel 3,000 MW out of the 4600 MW capacity
of the power plant currently under construction in Rachaburi.
Using other sources of fuel entails substantially higher financial and
environmental costs. For example, the hydroelectric power stations
currently operating in the country required the construction of 16 dams
and have a combined capacity of about 2,700 MW, 300 MW less than the
3000MW output to be fueled by gas from Myanmar.
Coal could be used, but it would require a costly desulphurization
process. Similar costs and environmental problems are associated with
using bunker oil and diesel oil to generate electricity.
The main issue in the construction of the pipeline project involves a
50-km section which passes through a reserve forest.
The Petroleum Authority of Thailand (PTT) has taken a firm stand in
favor of completing the project as planned, while the contractor TASCO
Mannesmann and certain environmental groups want the 50 km section
rerouted.
PTT Governor Pala Sookawesh said the existing planned route minimizes
environmental impacts, adding that pipeline construction would involve a
20-meter wide path through the 50-km stretch of the forest.
He said about 625 rai in reserve forest land area would be affected, and
PTT will undertake reforestation and other restoration efforts covering
30,000-40,000 rai.
The PTT Governor also said an alternate route proposed by the contractor
would result in much higher construction costs and far greater damage to
the environment.
Prasit Sapsakorn, Chairman of Tipco Asphalt (TASCO) and a major partner
in TASCO Mannesmann, a joint venture which won the contract to build the
pipeline, stated in a petition intended for Her Majesty the Queen that
he wanted the project rerouted for environmental reasons.
A senior PTT official said that the proposal to reroute the project was
related to a possible delay in the pipeline construction work and much
higher installation cost.
Job completed:
Myanmar has completed its onshore construction of the pipeline up to the
border with Thailand.
(The Nation)
Thai soldiers should not abuse refugees like Slorc
I would like to explain about a recent event in Huay Kaloke Karen
refugee camp in which one soldier under the Mae Sot district
administration command, shot threateningly at a member of the camp
community.
On May 24, at about 11 pm, five soldiers came by motorbike to the
refugee camp. The five arrived at the (Karen-organised) patrol
checkpoint which is located in front of a school. One of them was drunk
and demanded a girl from the refugee camp member who was on duty there.
That person tried to reason with the soldier. But the soldier responded
by challenging the camp patrol.
Suddenly, the soldier fired his M-16 twice into the ground, near the
man's feet. This shocked the people in the camp, and some packed their
bags, ready to flee. However, the Thai soldiers ordered the Karen on
duty to tell the camp that the incident was only an accident.
As far as we refugees know, the soldiers love money and girls, more than
they care about our security. I would like to urge these soldiers to
treat us as human beings and perform their duties accordingly.
I would also like to note a remark from one of our community
publications produced after Huay Kaloke and Huay Boe camps were burned
to the ground by Slorc and DKBA: ''We state that the security from the
Thai Army is inadequate ... What is the meaning of this? It means that
people come into our houses, kick us in the backside, sleep with our
wives and then leave, while we can only merely sit and watch."
We hope that the Thai soldiers will not continue to behave in a way that
will make it easy to mistake them for those who lay in wait across the
border to commit abuses against us.
''A refugee"
HUAY KALOKE CAMP
Despite Official Silence, Burmese Monks' Riot Is the Talk of Mandalay
Military Suspected of Provoking Disorders
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 8, 1997; Page A26
The Washington Post
This dusty, languorous city was roiled last March, when a peaceful
gathering of several thousand monks airing grievances about botched
government repairs of an immense golden Buddha turned into a two-evening
spasm of violence and vandalism directed against local Muslims.
The mayhem was meant partly as revenge for the reported rape of a
Buddhist girl, and it left in its wake at least one death, many injuries
and considerable property damage.
Establishing the cause of a disturbance such as the riots of March 16-17
is a major challenge in Burma, an isolated nation ruled by a xenophobic
military government that rigidly controls the news media, rarely holds
open court trials and represses public dissent.
But one possibly telling detail about the riots here has seeped into the
accounts of citizens and Western diplomats stationed in Burma -- that
some of the supposed monks who joined in the vandalism at mosques were
wearing army boots and carrying cellular telephones.
This has helped sustain a common suspicion here that Burmese military
forces played a role in provoking or carrying out some of the
anti-Muslim attacks. The further suspicion is that they did so partly to
preserve the idea that only a strong authoritarian hand can keep a lid
on the ethnic and religious tensions supposedly boiling below the
surface of this outwardly placid society.
Although Burma is overwhelmingly Buddhist -- and Buddhism is a central
element of the culture -- roughly 4 percent of the 48 million population
is Muslim and 4 percent is Christian. In addition, the country harbors
at least 15 major ethnic groups, many of which have long battled the
central government and each other.
According to several diplomats, military leaders typically have dealt
with dissent or outbreaks of public violence with crushing "scorched
earth" techniques. Ne Win, the general who controlled Burma officially
until 1988 and evidently still retains influence with his military
successors, began his rule in 1962 by dynamiting the student union at
the University of Rangoon, a historic meeting place for dissidents.
Ne Win also ordered his troops -- who make up a land army second in size
to Vietnam's in Southeast Asia -- to fire directly into crowds
protesting economic problems and military rule in 1988. Some student
protest leaders' heads were severed. Because monks had played a role in
those protests, the military orchestrated a purge of Buddhist clergy in
the early 1990s and today has seeded senior Buddhist ranks with spies,
according to several diplomats.
The military junta, which calls itself the State Law and Order
Restoration Council, has imprisoned hundreds of political dissidents
without trial, including some who allegedly are being held in a corner
of the walled palace compound in central Mandalay that was built by King
Mindon Min in 1857. In the last two weeks alone, the junta detained more
than 300 members of the chief opposition party to block a meeting in
Rangoon.
Disappearances and "extrajudicial killings" of political dissidents are
also orchestrated periodically by the military, according to the most
recent State Department report on human rights here.
When the latest protests erupted in Mandalay, the nation's second
largest city and its seat of power in ancient times, the military
responded at first by deploying troops with automatic weapons throughout
the city and ordering a tight evening curfew.
On the second evening, some of the troops fired over the heads of the
rioters and the ricocheting bullets killed at least one monk, according
to sources here. Annual proficiency tests for monks were canceled by the
government and many were ordered home from local monasteries.
More than a month later, the atmosphere remains edgy here and in the
capital, Rangoon, where several hundred monks also attacked some
mosques. The downtown area in Mandalay, where many mosques are located,
is closely watched by plainclothesmen. It is prohibited to take
photographs of the damaged buildings and cab drivers express fear of
transporting passengers to the zone.
That monks participated in such a riot seems bizarre to a casual
observer. The Buddhist faith here promotes compassion and nonviolence
and virtually all males spend time in monasteries as an adolescent rite
of passage, when they supposedly are imbued with values that promote
peaceful resolution of all grievances.
But local sources say many of those who wear a monk's garb are not
serious students of the religion. They add that in this instance a long
tradition of political activism and even violence by some senior monks
carried over to some younger monks.
"Anything could happen here, anything at all," said a Burmese
businessman whose clientele includes some senior military leaders.
"Things get out of hand quickly here, once there is a spark," said a
Western diplomat about Burmese politics.
According to several local sources, the spark that prompted the March
riots was a cry from someone in a crowd of monks at the Mahamuni Pagoda
at the edge of the city that a local Muslim man had raped a Buddhist
woman and gone unpunished. Word of the crime reportedly came just as
senior monks were discussing how the military may have mishandled
repairs to an immense, 2,000-year-old bronze image of Buddha at the
site.
The assault actually had occurred several weeks earlier, may have fallen
short of a rape, and apparently was resolved satisfactorily by members
of the families involved, according to several local sources. But, after
hearing about the crime in a mob, an angry group of young monks stormed
from the pagoda to exact revenge on more than a dozen mosques in the
downtown area, where they smashed windows, destroyed furniture and
burned copies of the Koran.
The government blamed the episode on "elements" that wanted to embarrass
Burma in the neighboring Muslim capitals of Indonesia and Malaysia, with
the aim of blocking Burma's planned admission this year to the
Association of South East Asian Nations, a regional economic and
political bloc. But few details about the episode have appeared in the
Burmese media, a circumstance that has helped spread rumor and focus
suspicion on the leadership.
"People here are willing to believe anything" negative about the
military rulers, because they are so widely despised, said a resident.
Asia Trade Group Formed
By VIKAS BAJAJ
Associated Press Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Hoping to capitalize on South Asia's booming
population to become a economic powerhouse, four countries bordering the
Indian Ocean formed a trade group Friday.
Foreign ministry officials from India, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sri
Lanka signed the trade pact. They said Burma, despite international
criticism of its human rights record, would join the group within a
year.
Trade among the countries totals only $1 billion, but with a combined
population of 1.3 billion people, optimism abounds that regional trade
can expand quickly in the next decade.
``The market potential is there,'' said Kobsak Chutikul, director of
economic affairs at the Thai Foreign Ministry. ``This is the time to
bring this subdivision together.''
Burma originally expressed interest in becoming a founding member of the
trade group. Representatives of the pact's member countries said,
without elaborating, that Burma was ``not ready'' for full membership
but would be within a year.
Bismillahir Rahim, a senior Bangladeshi official, told reporters that
repression of Burma's democratic opposition by the ruling military would
not bar its membership.
Burma won approval last week to join the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations in July. ASEAN rejected calls by many countries, including the
United States, to deny Burma admission's to protest of its treatment of
the pro-democracy movement led by 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San
Suu Kyi.
Officials hope the new trade group will link ASEAN, in which Thailand is
a key member, and the South Asian Association of Regional Countries,
which includes India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
The group -- to be known as the Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka,
Thailand-Economic Cooperation -- has already discussed forming a
regional airline, owned by all four governments, to serve smaller
destinations in each country.
Other possible projects include boosting tourism to Buddhist religious
sites in all four countries, said Saleem Shervani, an Indian government
minister.
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