SCMP-EU team slips out amid secrecy

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Subject: SCMP-EU team slips out amid secrecy over sensitive talks

South China Morning Post
Friday, July 9, 1999
BURMA

EU team slips out amid secrecy over sensitive talks
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Bangkok

A European Union mission has slipped out of Burma, leaving few clues as to
the success of its effort to reopen a human rights dialogue with the junta,
envoys said yesterday.
Secrecy surrounds the two days of sensitive talks which saw the four-man
team - representing Finland, Portugal, the EU secretariat and the European
Commission - meet powerful junta First Secretary Khin Nyunt and opposition
leaders including Aung San Suu Kyi.

Diplomats said the team would also propose talks between the military
authorities and Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party,
which won the 1990 elections only to be denied power by the junta.

"They wish first to report to the EU working committee and they don't want
to jump the gun, so to speak," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Tauno Kaaria
said.

A British diplomat in Rangoon said: "The atmosphere was cordial and there
was an exchange of information on both sides."

But she said any more details of the success or failure of the mission could
take "a long time" to come back from the working committee in Brussels.

A media blackout of the meetings has been imposed in Burma, with no coverage
in the newspapers and no comment from officials.

Political dialogue between the junta and the EU has been on ice since the EU
imposed sanctions in 1996.

Seven Burmese soldiers were killed and 12 wounded in a clash with ethnic
Karen rebel troops near the Thai border, Thai border police said.