BurmaNet News, May 18, 2006

[Editor]

May 18, 2006 Issue # 2965

"The four-year-old child is under virtual house arrest. Burmese agents are
keeping a constant watch on her. She is not free to move. She cannot even
go out of Yan Lem Phai, let alone out of Myanmar."
- Burma Solidarity Organisation activist Dr. Thura commenting on 4-year
old Ei Po Po’s continued detention, after the girl and her father and
mother were kidnapped by Burmese agents in January, as quoted in South
China Morning Post, May 18, 2006.

INSIDE BURMA
AP: Myanmar troops widen Karen offensive
Irrawaddy: Junta failing to pay for military facilities
Mizzima: UN under secretary general arrives in Rangoon
Xinhua: Germany to aid Myanmar education program against HIV/AIDS

BUSINESS / TRADE
Mizzima: India offers Burma cash for gas

INTERNATIONAL
Washington Post: Tutu presses for U.N. action on Myanmar
AFP: Annan says it's Asia's turn for secretary general
New Statesmen: News Statesmen Magazine Hero of Our Time poll: Aung San Suu
Kyi

____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

May 18, Associated Press
Myanmar troops widen Karen offensive - Denis D. Gray

Bangkok: Myanmar troops, who have driven an estimated 15,000 Karen
villagers from their homes, are throwing more battalions into a widening
offensive against the ethnic minority, a Karen group said Thursday.

The Karen Human Rights Group said 4,000 to 5,000 troops were poised to
destroy hundreds of villages in the Papun hills of eastern Myanmar, which
would lead to another mass displacement of civilians.

"This is not an offensive against Karen resistance forces, and there has
been very little combat," the activist group said in a statement Tuesday.
"These are attacks against undefended villages with the objective of
flushing villagers out of the hills to bring them under direct military
control so they can be used to support the (army) with food and forced
labor."

Myanmar's ruling military has acknowledged its army is waging an
offensive, calling the action necessary to suppress bombings and other
attacks by anti-government guerrillas from the Karen National Union, which
has been fighting for autonomy for nearly six decades.

The Karen rose up shortly after Myanmar, then known as Burma, gained
independence from Great Britain after World War II, claiming that the
Burman majority were out to suppress the ethnic peoples. The military took
over the country in 1962 and has since then been unable to end the
bloodshed.

The junta, which rarely comments on military activities, was apparently
responding to growing international criticism that the offensive has
uprooted thousands of ethnic Karen civilians and is causing a humanitarian
crisis due to their lack of shelter and food.

Sharp criticism has been voiced in recent days by U.N. officials, U.S.
Congressmen and members of the British Parliament.

The Myanmar regime routinely denies committing human rights abuses against
the ethnic minorities and has declined to respond to numerous queries by
reporters on the current offensive.

The offensive, which began last November, has been concentrated in the
Toungoo and Nyaunglebin districts of Karen State, but the group said
operations were now spreading into Papun district where more than 1,000
people have already been displaced.

"The only combat which has occurred is when Karen Army forces try to keep
(junta) troops away from killing displaced villagers in their hiding
places," the statement said.

Attacks in the district, the statement said, began to escalate last month.

"Several villages have already been burned, rice supplies systematically
destroyed, and villagers shot on sight," it said.

The campaign in Karen State has forced more than 2,500 refugees to flee to
or across the border with neighboring Thailand.

A number interviewed last week by The Associated Press inside Myanmar
confirmed earlier reports of executions, looting and torching of villages
by the Myanmar troops.

The offensive is the largest since 1997 against the Karen, the biggest of
a half dozen insurgency groups fighting the central government.

Former junta member Gen. Khin Nyunt had negotiated cease-fires with 17
ethnic insurgent groups and was working on a peace deal with the Karen
National Union when he was ousted by rival generals in 2004.

____________________________________

May 18, Irrawaddy
Junta failing to pay for military facilities - Clive Parker

The Burmese military is stalling on payments worth millions of US dollars
to domestic and international contractors developing facilities in and
around the new capital Pyinmana, The Irrawaddy has learned.

The government’s failure to settle costs for the construction of Pyinmana
is understood to have put a serious financial strain on the Rangoon-based
companies building the new capital, including Htoo Trading, Eden Group and
Asia World. None were available for comment on the issue.

Thiha, a director at Htoo Trading and the brother of the head of the
company, Tay Za, declined to comment, saying he was not able to give
information on “government matters.”

However, a source that has witnessed the development of the new capital
says that Htoo Trading is owed millions of US dollars in unpaid
installments, adding that the government probably does not have the
necessary funds to pay off contractors, which also include a number of
smaller companies.

Snr-Gen Than Shwe and Vice Snr-Gen Maung Aye’s personal residences in
Pyinmana were built by Htoo Trading and Asia World Company. Despite
serious cash flow problems, both companies will be involved in the next
phase of construction of the new capital.

Meanwhile, the government is also defaulting on payments to the
State-owned Ukrainian arms supplier UkrspetsExport, although it is not
clear which accounts have not been paid—the Kiev-based firm has reportedly
supplied various military equipment to the regime in recent years,
including a radar system and tanks.

The impasse is thought to be related to UkrspetsExport’s 10-year contract
to supply armored personnel carriers to the Burmese military as part of a
deal agreed to in April 2004 reportedly worth in excess of US $500
million. A former employee of the company who did not want to be named
said that the program represents UkrspetsExport’s largest interest in
Burma and is coordinated at a facility just outside Meiktila in Mandalay
Division, 80 miles north of Pyinmana.

Under the arrangement, UkrspetsExport is contracted to supply 1,000 APC’s
which are shipped to Burma partly assembled. Ukrainian technicians then
assist Burmese military personnel in completing assembly at the factory in
Meiktila as part of a skills transfer program.

UkrspetsExport’s Rangoon office at the Nikko Hotel has refused to comment
on the issue. Sergiy Korostil, who runs the office with his wife Natalia,
would not speak to The Irrawaddy, saying only that the situation was “his
own problem.”

The Ukrainian Ambassador to Burma Ihor Hummenyi—who is based in
Bangkok—said on Thursday he was unaware of any such problems the state-run
firm was having with the junta: “We know they have activities in Myanmar
[Burma], but I know nothing about their relationship with the government,”
he said.

Whether the incident will prompt UkrspetsExport to pull out of Burma is
unclear given its already large financial interest in the country and the
region—Southeast Asia was the Ukraine’s biggest market in 2004 and 2005,
according to the Russian-language Defense Express website based in Kiev.
The APC market is also one of the most profitable for UkrspetsExport.

Questions remain, though, about why the Burmese government would need such
a large consignment of APC’s—military experts say that the vehicles are
useless in fighting Burma’s insurgency movements in Karen and Shan States,
given that they cannot operate in forested areas. Analysts say they are
more likely to be used during civil unrest to transport large numbers of
soldiers into urban areas at short notice, as the Thai Army did during
uprisings in 1992.

The affair represents further embarrassment for UkrspetsExport just four
years after allegations the company supplied a radar system to Iraq under
Saddam Hussein, a claim the company maintains is untrue. In an attempt to
restore the company’s tarnished reputation, the newly-elected president of
the Ukraine, Viktor Yuschenko, replaced the head of UkrspetsExport shortly
after coming to power following a popular uprising in January 2005.

The new director general of the firm, Member of Parliament Serhiy
Bondarchuk, would oversee a new “transparent and open-ended” era in
Ukrainian weapons exports, Yuschenko told the local press at the time.

Serhiy Bondarchuk’s office at the UkrspetsExport headquarters in Kiev did
not respond to repeated telephone calls and faxes requesting further
information for this story.

____________________________________

May 18, Mizzima News
UN under secretary general arrives in Rangoon - Jessicah Curtis

United Nations under secretary general for political affairs Ibrahim
Gambari arrived in Rangoon today as part of a three-day visit to assess
the political and human rights situation in Burma.

While the UN in Burma has been tight-lipped about the visit, with staff
saying Gambari's schedule was "highly confidential", the National League
for Democracy told Mizzima today their top leaders were due to meet the UN
representative tomorrow afternoon at a government-run guest house.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win said party members were likely to discuss UN action
on Burma with Gambari.

"We think that a UN resolution will be the focus of the discussions," he
said.

Gambari is the first UN envoy to have access to Burma and the NLD in more
than two years. Sources in the UN confirmed today he has asked the Burmese
military for permission to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. It is still unclear
whether or not they agreed.

While Nyan Win said the NLD felt positive about Gambari's visit,
describing it as "very useful" many Burmese are skeptical, saying little
will be achieved.

A journalist in Rangoon told Mizzima today, "I think not much will come
out of this [visit]. The military will not show the truth as always.
[Gambari] will only be given lies," the journalist said.

International aid workers have also questioned the visit.

"I don't think anyone is expecting it to bear fruit," one humanitarian
worker said.

He said the timing of the visit and the secrecy surrounding it were odd,
citing the recent pushes the have Burma included on the Security Council
agenda and the failure of previous envoys to produce tangible results.

"It doesn't seem to be a strategically good time. Across the board there
is concern that the visit will be pretty ineffectual."

Gambari was due to meet with UN staff today but there was confusion over
whether or not the meeting would happen with one UN worker telling
Mizzima, "We are waiting for him now but we don't know if he will show
up".

____________________________________

May 18, Xinhua
Germany to aid Myanmar education program against HIV/AIDS

Yangon: Germany will extend an aid which worth over 80,000 U.S. dollars to
Myanmar to help implement an education program against HIV/AIDS being
launched by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in cooperation
with local society, the Khit Myanmar weekly reported Thursday.

Using the German aid, the UNICEF will jointly implement with three local
social organizations education program in 20 townships threatened by
HIV/AIDS, the report said, adding that the program is mainly aimed at
youths.

Under the program, the UNICEF will provide education on prevention against
the disease to children of school-going age and those who stay out of
school, it said.

Myanmar and the UNICEF are implementing a five-year project ( 2006-2010)
in Myanmar covering a wide range of sectors. Using 106 million U.S.
dollars allotted by the UNICEF, the projects planned for this year are
basic healthcare for children and improvement of their nutrition,
education, prevention of HIV/AIDS, availability of clean and safe drinking
water in some townships in need as well as protection of children from
being unjustly exploited, according to the Public Relations Department.

Myanmar started cooperating with the UNICEF in 1950 with an anti- leprosy
campaign as their the first cooperation project.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

May 18, South China Morning Post
Rescue of arrested four-year-old fails

New Delhi: Attempts by India-based pro-democracy activists to take a
four-year-old out of Myanmar failed when military agents guarding the
child intercepted them after they secretly entered the country.

Because her father was a pro-democracy activist and supporter of 1991
Nobel prizewinner Aung San Suu Kyi, Ei Po Po in January became the
youngest prisoner in military ruled Myanmar when she was picked up by
security forces while visiting her grandparents in the country's north.
Her father has been sentenced to death and her mother handed a five-year
jail term for "anti-national" activities.

"Born in India and living with her parents, Ei attended a nursery school
in Manipur. But in Myanmar it is impossible for her impoverished
grandparents to take her to another nursery school. [Myanmese] authorities
did not even allow her aunt to bring the child back to India where she
could return to her old school. It is ruthless," said Burma Solidarity
Organisation activist Dr Thura, who has one name.

Ma Cho - Ei's aunt, living as a refugee in northeast India's Manipur state
- visited Myanmar last month to take her niece back to India, but was
unable to meet the child, who was under the constant watch of security
agents. "I could not even enter [her village of] Yan Lem Phai. From
friends in a nearby village, I knew that outsiders visiting the house [of
Ei's grandparents] needed permission from the local military authority.
Fearing for my own security I returned to India," she said.

Dr Thura said: "The four-year-old child is under virtual house arrest.
Burmese agents are keeping a constant watch on her. She is not free to
move. She cannot even go out of Yan Lem Phai, let alone out of Myanmar."

An attempt to rescue the child this month failed when an activist from the
group was intercepted by agents inside Myanmar. The activist escaped and
returned safely to India.

"We had a plan to present Ei in front of the international media in India
or Thailand. Somehow, Burmese military intelligence got to know about our
plan and took the decision not to let the child out of Burma," Dr Thura
said. "This is the simple reason why they have thrown the ring of security
around the child now."

Mrs Cho said: "It is impossible to bring the child back to her school in
India now. We pray that she gets back her mother after five years. But
again there is a possibility that the mother and child will not be allowed
to leave Burma then. The child is facing a bleak uncertainty."

____________________________________
BUSINESS / TRADE

May 18, Mizzima News
India offers Burma cash for gas - Syed Ali Mujtaba

India offered Burma cash for surplus compressed natural gas imports
yesterday without waiting for the finalisation of a deal for gas from
Arakan State's A1 and A3 blocks.

"India has offered to give cash for whatever quantity of gas Mynamar is
willing to offer from the surplus it currently has after supplies to
Thailand," a senior petroleum ministry official said on the sidelines of
an energy conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The statement came after Burma's ambassador to India assured the country
Burma had more than enough gas to go around.

The official also said Burma supplied gas from the Yadana and Yetagun
fields at different prices with Yanadan the lowest.

"We have sought gas supplies at the same cost as that supplied to Thailand
from Yadana gas fields," he said.

"We have told them that we would be willing to lift the gas supplies
within nine months of the deal being finalised and bring it to India in
the form of CNG."

According to estimates, Burma has about 200,000 tons of surplus gas.

____________________________________
INTERNATIONAL

May 17, The Washington Post
Tutu presses for U.N. action on Myanmar - Glenn Kessler

Washington: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel Peace Prize
laureate, met Wednesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press
for a binding U.N. Security Council resolution calling on the Myanmar
military junta to release Aung Sung Suu Kyi and other political prisoners
and halt a counterinsurgency campaign that is targeting civilians.

"The secretary is very, very concerned about the situation in Burma. She
said they really want to do all they can," Tutu said in an interview after
the meeting. "The situation is deteriorating very, very greatly."

Tutu said he understands that the Myanmar people feel "deep distress that
they are going through such hell." But, he added, "when we were struggling
against apartheid there were times when we felt it didn't seem as if the
system would change. They must know it will change, and they have the
world to support them. "

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is regarded as one of the world's most
repressive nations. The party of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, won an election the previous year that the military
leadership refused to accept. She has been repeatedly detained, and her
most recent confinement began after a bloody crackdown by
government-sponsored gangs on her and her supporters three years ago.

Tutu, along with former Czech Republic president Vaclav Haval,
commissioned a report last year on Myanmar that helped bring the issue
before the Security Council for the first time. The U.N. undersecretary
general for political affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, is due to arrive in Yangon
Thursday for the first high-level talks between the United Nations and
Burma in two years. Gambari has requested a meeting with Suu Kyi, but it
isn't clear if one will take place.

Under U.S. policy, any official traveling to Myanmar on behalf of an
organization or country must insist on seeing Suu Kyi. Tutu said he
believes Gambari's visit is "badly timed" and "very surprising" because he
is not insisting on seeing Suu Kyi. "They were trying to find every
possible way of being not abrasive, I think," Tutu said.

A State Department official who attended the meeting between Rice and Tutu
said a U.N. resolution is "a hard sell," but "we have got to get this back
on the Security Council agenda." He said Gambari's visit, and Suu Kyi's
birthday in June, provide an opportunity to request a briefing before the
Security Council. "If he doesn't see her, then we must bring it up before
the Security Council," he said.

Rice told Tutu that countries belonging to the Association of South East
Asian Nations "are beginning to feel the heat and are trying to apply
pressure on Burma," but more work needs to be done with China and India to
persuade them to be "more on the side of the angels," Tutu said.

____________________________________

May 18, Agence France Presse
Annan says it's Asia's turn for secretary general

Tokyo: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday that most nations
believe his successor should come from Asia, as campaigning for his
replacement intensifies.

"I can say that most of the member states believe that it is a turn for
Asia," Annan told a news conference in Tokyo.

"It is a practice that we have rotated it over the years from one region
to the other," the Ghanaian said.

The United States, however, has resisted the regional power-sharing
arrangement, saying it would support the best candidate regardless of his
or her region.

Several Asian countries are putting forward successors to Annan, whose
second five-year term expires at the end of the year. The world's largest
region has not had a UN chief since U Thant of Burma (now Myanmar)
finished his second term in 1971.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon, whom Annan met earlier this
week on his regional tour, has announced his candidacy.

Other Asians who have expressed interest include Thai Deputy Prime
Minister Surakiart Sathirathai and Sri Lanka's Jayantha Dhanapala, an
adviser to President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Japan has not put forward a candidate and Annan said Asia's largest
economy would have slim chances if it did.

"If Japan wants to put up a candidate for the secretary-generalship, I'm
sure it is free to do that," he said.

But "countries that are very powerful should not seek to get additional
power by seeking positions of that kind, traditionally," he said. "The
secretary general has come from countries not as powerful as Japan."

Japan, the largest contributor to the UN budget after the United States,
has put a priority on winning a permanent seat on the Security Council, a
goal that has remained elusive amid staunch opposition from China.

____________________________________

May 22, New Statesmen
News Statesmen Magazine Hero of Our Time poll

http://www.newstatesman.com/200605220016

There was no doubt about our winner: Aung San Suu Kyi , who received three
times as many nominations as even the great Mandela in second place.  She
has, as Richard Eyre wrote of her in a recent issue, "endured grief,
danger and loneliness with extraordinary grace and courage, all the while
inspiring resistance to the [corrupt Burmese] regime".

A fitting winner, then, and a true hero of this or any other time.

1. Aung San Suu Kyi - Pro-democracy campaigner Nobel Peace Prizewinner,
under house arrest in her native Burma

The confrontation between Aung San Suu Kyi and the brutish military rulers
of Burma (officially known as Myanmar) has the power of myth. At 60, Suu
Kyi is still lovely and delicate, like the strings of scented jasmine
always looped around her hair. The men in army fatigues and dark glasses
who have oppressed her for so long may try to stamp out this flagrantly
feminine opponent, but still she rises, unbowed and resolute.

Suu Kyi is the voice of yearning Burmese democrats. Her National League
for Democracy party has majority support but is denied power by the
military.

She is held under house arrest and NLD members are beaten and killed by
the junta's thugs. She could seek refuge abroad, where adulation awaits
her, but she chooses to stay, even to death.

Death has, paradoxically, been the making of Suu Kyi; it has stalked and
claimed her loved ones and supporters. But each tragedy seems only to
tighten her grip on life and her cause. The heady idealism of
post-colonial liberation sustains her still. Her father, General Aung San,
negotiator of Burma's independence from the British, was assassinated by
political rivals in 1947, when Suu Kyi was only two. One brother drowned
when he was eight.

In 1960 her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, became the Burmese ambassador to India.
There the young Suu Kyi was inspired by Gandhi's credo of non-violent
resistance. Her own ideas were developed at Oxford and later in New York,
where she worked at the UN. In 1972, she married Michael Aris, a British
scholar of Tibetan culture. They had two sons.

I first met her in 1974 at a dinner, where she gently criticised the North
Vietnamese forces for their cruelty to prisoners. We anti-Vietnam war
hippies were left feeling oddly soiled. Even then, Suu Kyi's
uncompromising principles provoked admiration but irritation, too.

Much later, in March 1988, she returned to Burma to nurse her dying
mother, and was hurled into the furnace of political chaos and military
tyranny.

That July the dictator General Ne Win resigned. Popular unrest spread and
thousands were killed. Suu Kyi formed the NLD.  In September, the junta
curtailed freedoms and announced an election.  Suu Kyi was under house
arrest and yet her party won. Since then she has been a de facto captive
of the state, sometimes allowed no visitors for months. In 1995, her
husband became ill with prostate cancer but was not allowed into Burma.
She has not seen her sons since 1988.  To leave would have been to break
the promise she made to her people.

They may put Suu Kyi away, but cannot make her go away from the
international stage. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, she leads
without armies, media manipulation or economic might. Naturally, she has
her detractors. The junta brands her a foreign stooge, and now leader of a
"terrorist" network. Ziauddin Sardar sees a modernised oriental woman who
"triggers all the stereotypes associated with oriental sexuality buried
deep in western consciousness". Others have more credible reservations.
Suu Kyi, like Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi before her, is the
beneficiary of family privilege and power. If she had taken power in 1990,
her appeal may have dulled by now.

Yet she remains in her tower, inviolate. In this increasingly grubby world
of expedient and violent politics, the miracle is not that Suu Kyi
survives but that she continues to matter so much. Not since Nelson
Mandela's long incarceration has a political prisoner drawn so much and
such consistent support from millions the world over.