Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Fri, 6 Nov 1992 20:13:55 PST
From:         "(Coban Tun)" <tun@QUARK.SFSU.EDU>
Subject:      BURMESE OPPOSITION SPURNS JUNTA CONVENTION

RTw  11/06 0056  BURMESE OPPOSITION SPURNS JUNTA CONVENTION

    By Angus MacSwan
    BANGKOK, Nov 6, Reuter - Burma's ruling generals have announced a national
convention to plan a new constitution, but they will be talking only to
themselves, spurned by groups ranged against them, exiles and guerrillas said
on Friday.
    The military junta announced on official radio on Thursday night the
convention would begin on January 9.
    Main opposition groups denounced it as a sham which they would have no
part in.
    The move was the latest in a series made by the State Law and Order
Restoration Council (SLORC) in recent months designed to show it is easing the
grip in which it has held Burma since troops suppressed a pro-democracy
uprising in 1988.
    International human rights groups have dismissed the changes as cosmetic
and say the junta's record of repression remains appalling.
    Bo Hle Tint, a minister in the exiled National Coalition Government of the
Union of Burma, said the junta had no right to call a convention.
    "This is none of their business. They have no mandate from the people," he
said.
    The coalition was set up in December 1990 by opposition politicians who
fled persecution to link up with ethnic guerrillas and other dissidents
based in the jungle on the Thai border.
    The junta should honour the results of the May 1990 election, won by the
National League for Democracy (NLD) but ignored by the generals, Bo Hle Tint
said.
    "We are the representatives of the people," he said.
    Hla Pe, an elected NLD member now exiled in Bangkok, said the junta was
playing for time.
    Some NLD members who remained in Burma might attend but they had been
cowed
by intimidation and manipulated, he said.
    "This is another atttempt by the SLORC to trick the Burmese people and the
world," he said.
    There appeared no chance whatsoever that the opposition's most potent
figure, Aung San Suu Kyi, would be involved.
    The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize is now in her fourth year under house arrest
and has been stripped of her leadership of the NLD. The junta says it
will release her if only she gives up politics.
    Dissident students have not even been invited, said Aung Naing Oo, foreign
affairs secretary of the All-Burma Students Democratic Front.
    Because of their role in the front line of the struggle for democracy
their views must be heard, he said.
    A few Rangoon-based students may attend the convention -- "sons and
daughters of the SLORC," he said.
    A Karen guerrilla officer simply laughed when asked about it.
    The Karen, strongest of an array of ethnic minority armies, are battling a
government campaign against their border strongholds despite Foreign Minister
Ohn Gyaw's statement at the United Nations in New York last month that
military operations were suspended as a gesture of reconciliation.
    The convention is only to lay the ground for drafting a new constitution.
Diplomats say the process could take years and even then there is no guarantee
of multi-party elections.
    The junta has also stated that the army will continue to play a prominent
political role in the future.
 REUTER AM JS GD
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