Myanmar's Karen rebels set up new headquarters

Myanmar's Karen rebels set up new headquarters

BANGKOK (Agencies): Myanmar's Karen National Union (KNU)
guerrilla group has set up a new headquarters inside Myanmar
after the capture by Myanmarese government forces of its former
headquarters at Manerplaw late last month, a KNU official said
yesterday.

"Most of our leaders are already there," guerrilla official
Arthur Shwe said of the new base though he declined to reveal its
location for security reasons.

"Maybe it will be only a temporary headquarters, a mobile
headquarters. It might move," he told a small group of reporters.

Manerplaw, on the Thai-Myanmarese border 200 kilometers
northeast of Yangon, was seized by Myanmarese government forces
on Jan. 27.

Karen leaders including guerrilla commander Gen. Bo Mya, as
well as some 6,000 civilian supporters, were forced to take
refuge in Thailand after the base fell.

Manerplaw was also the headquarters of pro-democracy
dissidents and student guerrillas who fled to the Karen zone
following a 1988 crackdown on democracy demonstrations in Yangon
and other cities and towns.

Shwe said he expected the Karen's partners in the opposition
alliance to join them at their new headquarters soon.

Shwe reiterated that the KNU was always ready to talk peace
with the ruling military body in Yangon.

"The door is always open to talks," He said.

A senior Myanmarese military intelligence official hinted to
reporters in Yangon on Friday that the government might be
reluctant to open peace talks with the KNU after a mutiny in the
group late last year.

"We may have to consider whether the KNU is representing the
majority of the Karen armed group members or not," Col. Kyaw Win
told a news conference.

About 500 Karen guerrillas mutinied against their leaders in
December and later assisted Myanmarese forces in their offensive
on Manerplaw.

Desperation

Meanwhile, an ethnic group still at war with the junta said
Yangon's recent assault on the rebel stronghold of Manerplaw was
a symptom of its desperation for foreign investment.

"Burma's (Myanmar's) communication networks need dramatic
upgrading to win significant further foreign investment. The
over-valued currency, in official rate of six kyat to the dollar,
is one-20th the black-market level," the New Mon State Party
asserted in an official statement obtained here yesterday.

"All these pinches had led the SLORC to the present
desperation," the statement, dated Jan. 31, said.

The State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC, is the
official name of the military regime in Yangon which seized power
in 1988.

SLORC troops secured Manerplaw, the headquarters for ethnic
Karen resistance and other anti-Yangon groups, on January 27,
breaking a unilateral cease-fire declared in 1992.

The statement by the ethnic Mon leadership said "it is very
encouraging that the United States ... had expressed its deep
concern over the Manerplaw incident."

It also called on the SLORC "to accommodate the country's
preeminent symbol of democracy," dissident leader and Nobel Peace
Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mon leaders renewed this weekend a vow to attack a multi-
million dollar pipeline which is to run from Myanmar's Andaman
Sea to Thailand, The Sunday Nation reported.