More Articles About Burma

[nyeinchan@xxxxxxxxxxx]

>From Washington Post
Report: Burma Party Wants to Rejoin 

Tuesday, June 24, 1997; 5:49 a.m. EDT 


RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- The political party headed by pro-democracy 
leader Aung San Suu Kyi wants to rejoin the military-run convention to 
draft a new constitution for Burma, state-run newspapers said today. 

The National League for Democracy walked out of the convention in 1995, 
criticizing it as undemocratic. Convention leaders then expelled the 
party, and the government has said there is no procedure to allow it to 
rejoin. 

Commentaries that ran in all three Burmese papers said a resolution 
passed last month by the democracy party's executive committee called 
for it ``to rejoin the national convention and to conclude the 
convention honorably.'' 

It was unclear whether the party had formally asked to rejoin the 
convention. Suu Kyi and party leaders could not be reached for comment 
because the military regime has cut their phones lines. 

The convention has met intermittently since 1993, but there have been no 
meetings for more than a year. Diplomats and analysts suspect that 
several participating groups are unhappy with the charter being drafted. 

Democracy activists have labeled the convention a sham because most 
delegates were handpicked by the military, and the constitution they are 
drafting enshrines military rule. 

The military has ruled Burma, which it calls Myanmar, since 1962. Suu 
Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate and daughter of independence hero Aung San, 
was thrust into prominence by the 1988 uprising against military rule 
that was crushed when troops killed more than 3,000 protesters. 

Her democracy party won a 1990 election that the military refused to 
honor. Though it won 82 percent of that vote, it had only about 15 
percent of the seats at the constitutional convention. 

The commentaries in today's state-run newspapers derided Suu Kyi and her 
party for seeking readmittance to the convention. 

``Why and for what reasons do you want to rejoin the national 
convention, which the political stunt star wife of the Englishman (Suu 
Kyi) and her masters had slandered and opposed,'' said one editorial 
written by a high-ranking intelligence officer under a pseudonym. 

On Monday, the same author wrote that Suu Kyi was a puppet of the CIA. 

``The national convention is not a licenseless bootleg liquor shop where 
you can go in and come out without discipline,'' he said. 

Diplomats have said that relations between Suu Kyi and the regime 
deteriorated sharply after her party left the convention. 

The regime stepped up arrests of party members, prevented Suu Kyi from 
delivering her weekend public addresses, paid a mob to attack her 
motorcade with sticks and pipes, and has restricted people from visiting 
her home. 

>From 1989 to 1995, Suu Kyi was under house arrest for her political 
activities. 

© Copyright 1997 The Associated Press



Clinton Summit Speech - Text 4 

Sunday, June 22, 1997; 7:41 p.m. EDT 


Q: Mr. President, your administration has been criticized for cutting 
China a break in terms of how you deal with it using a policy of 
constructive engagement, but there is a double standard. You are tougher 
on other countries for similar transgressions, but with China you think 
talk is best. The basic criticism comes down to the notion that for the 
sake of trade the administration will compromise its principles. Can you 
respond to that please? 

CLINTON: Yes, I don't think it's fair. For example, if you look at our 
policy toward Burma, which unlike China had a democratically-elected 
government and reversed it, and represents the most severe abuses of 
political and civil rights that we have dealt with recently in terms of 
our actions. We've been for sanctions against Burma, but we haven't 
repealed MFN. And when you look at China, we still have Tiananmen Square 
sanctions on China that we haven't gotten rid of. We have given up a lot 
of business in China clearly, and they've made it clear that we have, by 
continuing to press our human rights concerns in the human rights forum. 
What we don't believe would be fruitful is to withdraw normal trading 
status from China -- something we have with virtually every country in 
the world -- in a way that would estrange us further from them, prevent 
us from working together on problems like North Korea, weapons 
proliferation and other issues, and endanger the ability of the United 
States to be a partner with China in the 21st century. That's what we 
don't believe. We have paid quite a price from time to time for our 
insistence on advancing human rights, and I just don't think we're ... 
you know, taking normal trading status away from them is much of a way 
to influence them over the long run. I think it's a mistake. 

Q: Mr. President, the Senate Finance Committee, including the Democrats 
by and large, have supported legislation they want you to sign that 
would do two very dramatic things to Medicare -- raise the eligibility 
age from 65 to 67 and impose what's called means testing -- making sure 
that millionaires and richer Medicare recipients pay more for the 
premiums than poorer Medicare recipients. Could you tell us specifically 
right now how you will come down on these two very sensitive, 
politically sensitive issues? 

CLINTON: Well, let's take them differently, separately. First of all, 
both of them are clearly outside the budget agreement. And you know if I 
 ... because I felt so strongly about honoring the budget agreement, I 
did not try to help the advocates of the Kennedy-Hatch bill pass their 
child health plan, even though I strongly support it. I didn't try to 
help them pass it, because I wanted to honor the budget agreement. So I 
think I can be forgiven for asking that other people honor the agreement 
if they voted for it. 

Now, if any senators didn't vote for it, I can't expect them to honor 
it. But if they voted for it, it was very specific, and that's what 
concerns me about it. 

Now, let's take them independently on their merits, because I wouldn't 
say that the administration and the leaders of both parties in Congress 
couldn't come back during the course of this endeavor and agree in 
effect that this should be considered as consistent with the budget 
agreement -- not this issue, but just any particular issue. So let's 
take these two issues. 

Number one, on the question of raising the eligibility of Medicare from 
65 to 67. When that was done on a phase-in basis for Social Security 
back in '83, I supported that on the grounds of increased life 
expectancy, changing demographic balance, and because it was part of a 
bipartisan process. My question here would be, apart from the fact that 
it is outside the agreement, is do we know that this would not lead to 
increased numbers of people without any health coverage. Has there been 
sufficient study here? Do we really have adequate evidence that we won't 
have increasing numbers of people without health insurance? 

On the means testing for -- not for the premiums but for the co-pays, 
which was what was done in the case of the cash -- I have said 
repeatedly that philosophically I was not opposed to means testing 
Medicare. And I've told Senator Lott that on the phone the other day. 
What my concerns are are the following: Number one, it's outside the 
agreement; number two, we have an agreement which has a lot of reform in 
Medicare and realigns $400 billion worth of savings and put 10 years on 
the trust fund right now; and that will this imperil it because people 
will be opposed to it? Or would this endanger the whole Medicare deal in 
the House for example, where I have reason to believe, based on our 
preliminary negotiations over the budget agreement, that there would be 
broad opposition in both parties? Thirdly, Mr. Reischauer and others 
have said that this particular proposal is probably not capable of being 
administered, that there are a lot of practical problems with it. 

So, again, I say I have said to leaders of both parties and to the 
American people I want to take care of more of the long-term problems 
with the entitlement -- both Social Security and Medicare. I am amenable 
to doing it in any bipartisan process. I have the specific problems I 
mentioned on these two issues, but the number one thing is we have got a 
great budget agreement. We should not alter it unless there is agreement 
among all the parties who made the budget agreement that it is 
acceptable to do, because otherwise we risk undermining the prize that 
we have when we could achieve these other objectives as soon as the 
budget is done in the appropriate bipartisan forum. 

© Copyright 1997 The Associated Press



"THERE WILL BE NO REAL DEMOCRACY IF WE CAN'T GURANTEE THE RIGHTS OF THE 
MINORITY ETHNIC PEOPLE.  ONLY UNDERSTANDING THEIR SUFFERING AND HELPING 
THEM TO EXERCISE THEIR RIGHTS WILL ASSIST PREVENTING FROM THE 
DISINTEGRATION AND THE SESESSION."  "WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THEIR 
STRENGTH, WE CAN'T TOPPLE THE SLORC AND BURMA WILL NEVER BE IN PEACE."



---------------------------------------------------------
Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
---------------------------------------------------------