Myanmar Junta Bars U.S. Ambassador

[RANGOONP@xxxxxxx]

Myanmar Bars U.S. Ambassador

 .c The Associated Press 

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Myanmar's military government will not grant the U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations permission to visit as long as its leaders
are barred from entering America, a government spokesman said today. 

Bill Richardson had hoped to visit Myanmar, also known as Burma, as part of a
swing through South Asia beginning Saturday that includes Bangladesh, India,
Pakistan and Sri Lanka. 

``Mr. Richardson is not outrightly refused permission to visit Myanmar,'' said
a government spokesman who speaks only on condition of anonymity. 

The U.N. ambassador could enter Myanmar if the ban on the country's leaders
entering America was ``either waived or lifted,'' the spokesman said in a fax
to The Associated Press. 

It was believed that Richardson changed his plans to visit Myanmar after
learning of the country's unwillingness to grant a visa. 

Richardson's staff was not available for comment. 

In October 1996, President Clinton issued an executive order barring members
of the military government and their families from visiting the United States.

The order was imposed as a largely symbolic protest over the military
government's mass arrests of members of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's
political party the National League for Democracy. 

No senior member of Myanmar's military government, which has ruled the country
since 1962, has ever visited the United States. 

The military government responded by issuing its own ban on senior U.S.
officials visiting Myanmar. It chose not to enforce the ban, however, when
several U.S. congressmen and former ambassadors toured Myanmar on junkets
sponsored by lobbying groups funded by U.S. oil companies. 

Unocal Corp. is a partner in a $1.2 billion gas pipeline in Myanmar. The Los
Angeles-based company has been sharply criticized for its involvement in
Myanmar, with some ethnic minority people saying they were used as forced
labor to build infrastructure for the project. 

Unocal had denied the charges. 

In 1994, as a Democratic congressman from New Mexico, Richardson was the first
non-family member the military government allowed to visit Suu Kyi. She was
under six years of house arrest at the time for her campaign to bring
democracy to Myanmar. 

The military refused his second request to meet her on a subsequent trip in
1995, and he accused the regime of ``repression, regression and
retrenchment.'' 

AP-NY-04-07-98 0554EDT