[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

The UN Envoy To Burma



U.N. chief offers to send envoy to ease Myanmar strife 
10:23 p.m. Jul 29, 1998 Eastern 

UNITED NATIONS, July 29 (Reuters) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan wants to
send a senior official to Myanmar and has asked the country's military junta
to schedule a visit, his spokesman said on Wednesday. 

The envoy, Alvaro de Soto, an assistant secretary-general, has visited
Myanmar several times in an effort to help resolve a continuous political
standoff without apparent success. 

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Annan had been in touch with the Myanmar
authorities to schedule a visit by DeSoto ``at a date in the not-too-distant
future.'' 

Eckhard spoke hours before opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi ended a
six-day protest in a car on the outskirts of the capital of Yangon and
returned to her home. The military had refused to let her visit her National
League for Democracy supporters, despite appeals from the United States,
Japan and the United Nations. 

He said Annan shared the concern of U.N. human rights commissioner, Mary
Robinson, who called on the government to let Suu Kyi travel freely. 

Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory in a 1990 election but was never
allowed to take power. The military had seized office in 1988 after crushing
demonstrations. It also changed the country's name from Burma to Myanmar. 

She was put under six years of house arrest and released in July 1995 after
winning the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent campaign for democracy.