Myanmar opposition looks to the future

Myanmar opposition looks to the future

YANGON (AFP): Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) took stock yesterday of a nine-year struggle against the country's ruling junta and looked to the future with plans for its youth wing.

The second and final day of the NLD congress resumed with more than 700 delegates in attendance after the military's State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), in a surprise move, gave its consent to the meeting.

Yesterday's agenda was dominated by two political papers, the first of which looked back on the party's trials and tribulations since it was set up in 1988 amid nationwide demonstrations against the previous military government.

In the same year, SLORC took power in a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in which thousands were killed.

But the second paper looked forward to the party's efforts with the NLD youth, NLD sources said.

It was the first national congress the party has been allowed to hold in two years, as the junta attempts to improve its image following the country's admission in July to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Earlier this month, SLORC's first secretary Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt invited NLD chairman Aung Shwe for open discussions which the government said could pave the way for dialog, but balked at including Aung San Suu Kyi.

Analysts said the SLORC appeared to be trying to polish its image while marginalizing the popular leader and Nobel laureate.

The party reinstalled Aung San Suu Kyi as leader following her release from six years of house arrest in 1995, but the junta has not recognized the move.

An NLD document read out to delegates at the mass meeting Saturday said the party remained open to "genuine dialog".

"The NLD will always welcome and leave a way open for a dialog to solve the nation's problems ... but such a dialogue must be meaningful as well as genuine," it said.

Such a dialog must be based on national interests and guarantee democracy and human rights, it added.

The document charged that previous meetings on the terms of the military government not only restricted the rights of a political party to nominate its own delegates, but were "one- sided affairs."

"Meeting and talking with other organizations and choosing and nominating their own representatives is the sole right of the party," it said.

The SLORC has come under repeated fire from some western nations and human rights activists for reported abuses and its suppression of the democracy movement in Myanmar.

Analysts and diplomats said the SLORC allowed the congress to proceed to avoid the international uproar which followed the detentions of hundreds of delegates when blocking the party's previous three attempts to hold a congress.

Tight security was deployed around Aung San Suu Kyi's residential compound, which was off-limits to traffic and the public, but more than twice the number of delegates than officially permitted were again let through the cordons.

Several hundred were turned away, however, as an estimated 1,300 NLD delegates gathered from across the country, despite efforts by local authorities to deny transportation from some of the more far-flung areas.

ASEAN members have been quietly pressing the junta to improve its image and seek accommodation with the country's most representative institution.

The NLD won more than 80 percent of seats in 1990 parliamentary elections never ratified by the SLORC.

But sources said Myanmar's foreign ministry was trying to discourage diplomats based here, especially from Asian countries, from attending the closing ceremonies of the congress.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.