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Reuters-Myanmar gov't cool to lates



Myanmar gov't cool to latest opposition challenge 
04:09 a.m. Sep 18, 1998 Eastern 

By David Brunnstrom 



BANGKOK, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government reacted coolly
on Friday to the National League for Democracy's declaration of a de facto
parliament, saying it was another move to push it into taking harsh
measures against the opposition. 



``They (the NLD) are trying to make the government take harsh reaction
against them. Only then will they be able to highlight anti-government
moves at the U.N. General Assembly that is to take place soon,'' said an
SPDC spokesman. 



In what analysts said was a symbolic challenge to the ruling generals, the
NLD on Thursday said a committee it formed this week would act on behalf of
the parliament elected in the country's last election in 1990 that was
never allowed to convene. 



The panel, which includes NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, named a chairman of
parliament and declared laws introduced since the military seized direct
control on September 18, 1988, illegal unless approved by the body. 



A government statement on Friday said the SPDC was watching with interest
the latest NLD move and questioned how the committee planned to work, its
policies and planned action. 



``While the NLD's committee puzzles over these issues, the current
government will continue to shoulder the real responsibilities of governing
Myanmar,'' it added. 



The NLD acted after the generals responded to its vow to call a ``People's
Parliament'' this month by detaining a large number of its members. 



The NLD committee said the parliamentary term would last until a democratic
constitution was approved and adopted by the parliament. 



The party says that since May, when it resolved to seek a parliament, more
than 800 of its members, including 195 elected representatives, have been
detained, most in the past two weeks. 



Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and daughter of Myanmar's
foremost independence leader Aung San, was held under house arrest for six
years until 1995. State media has carried commentaries in recent weeks
saying she should be deported. 



``What they are saying is they are the de facto parliament,'' said a
diplomat in Yangon, the Myanmar capital. ``They are saying they have a
mandate. ``It's essentially symbolic and the question is what the response
will be. The military may just ignore it.'' 



``I think this is an act like in a game of chess,'' said Josef Silverstein,
a professor at Rutgers University in the United States. 



``The military seized everybody they could and said 'now you can't hold
this parliament'. She (Suu Kyi) checks that move by saying we have the
proxies. 



``It's up now to the military to check her again. The question is are they
now going to raid her house and arrest her, as in a sense she seems to have
outfoxed them once again,'' Silverstein said in a telephone interview. 



Maureen Aung Thwin, Washington-based director of the Burma Project of the
Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute, said the military might hold off
for now to avoid provoking criticism at the U.N. General Assembly session. 



``My guess is they won't overreact,'' she said. ``In many ways the NLD's
timing has been brilliant. I think it's very difficult for the military to
act now, but they may decide to crack down again later once attention is
elsewhere.'' 



The analysts said it was significant the NLD had said that four ethnic
minority groups, two of which have agreed ceasefires with the government,
had supported its move. 



``I think what the military fears more than anything else is an alliance
between the NLD, which is dominated by ethnic Burmans, and the ethnic
minorities,'' Maureen Aung Thwin said. 



Silverstein said that while the NLD action was largely symbolic it might
provide a rallying point for students, who staged rare protests late last
month and early this month. 



The military has long argued that a parliament could not be formed until a
constitution is drawn up. It abolished the country's last constitution
after it took control in 1988. 



A national convention began painfully slow work on a new basic law in 1993,
but it has been suspended since 1996.