Daily News-February 19 - 2001- Monday

  • Burma junta's number-four killed in helicopter crash
  • Burma Copter Crash Kills Tin Oo
  • Chavalit Yongchaiyudh: Burma visit on back-burner
  • Thai-Burma Border: Uneasy calm, both sides reinforce troops
  • Thai Officials hope for a tougher Burma stance,not cosy arrangements
  • Burma's Junta 'Loosens Up Around the Edges'
  • Japanese Nurses to help leprosy patients in Burma
  • Leading Burma general killed in helicopter crash

    • Burma junta's number-four killed in helicopter crash

    YANGON, Feb 19 (AFP)

    The Burmese regime's number-four Lieutenant-General Tin Oo died Monday in a helicopter crash in the country's southwest, according a well-informed source.

    A total of 14 passengers, including Tin Oo and two cabinet ministers, were travelling to inspect plantations in Karen state when the helicopter developed a mechanical fault.

    Details of the incident were sketchy, but it appeared that the aircraft crash-landed into a body of water -- either a lake or a river, said the source, a relative of one of those aboard.

    Some of the passengers survived the crash but they failed to rescue Tin Oo, who suffered from a heart condition and was not able to swim.

    One of the ministers was named as Lun Maung, but the other has not been identified. It was not known whether they were among the survivors.

    The crash has not yet been officially confirmed by the military regime.
    Burma Copter Crash Kills Tin Oo

    Rangoon, Burma (AP)

    A Burmese army helicopter crashed Monday, killing the No. 4 general in the ruling military council and two Cabinet ministers, government officials said.

    They said the MI-17 Russian-made helicopter, carrying about a dozen officials, went down due to engine trouble in southeastern Burma.

    Among those killed was Lt. Gen. Tin Oo, known by the title of Secretary 2 in the ruling junta known as the State Peace and Development Council, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

    The others killed were Col. Thein Nyunt, the minister of progress of border areas and national races and development affairs, and Brig. Gen. Lun Maung, the minister in the prime minister's office, said the officials.

    One official told The Associated Press that the aircraft crashed in Salween river near Pa-an where Tin Oo and his party had reportedly gone to inspect a new bridge. The area is about 100 miles southeast of Rangoon, the capital.

    Some officials may have swum to safety but the fate of the others was not immediately known, the officials said.

    In Rangoon, well-wishers and friends thronged the home of Tin Oo to comfort his wife.

    Tin Oo, 67, was the chief of staff of the army and the fourth-ranking general in the regime that came to power in a bloodless coup in 1988.

    There was no other information from the government about the crash.

    Burma's government usually refuses to answer questions by reporters who call it on the telephone, and a military spokesman in Rangoon did not immediately respond to a fax sent to his office Monday with written questions about the reported crash.

    Tin Oo had survived at least one assassination attempt in April 1997 when a parcel bomb airmailed from Japan exploded in his house, killing his 32-year-old daughter, Cho Lei Oo, a university lecturer. Tin Oo was in the house but escaped unhurt.

    The government blamed anti-government dissidents, but rebel groups denied responsibility and said the bombing was the result of a power struggle in the ruling junta.

    On Christmas Day in 1996, two bombs tore through a Rangoon pagoda that Tin Oo had visited hours earlier. Five people were killed but it was not clear if Tin Oo was the target.

    Born on May 13, 1933, Tin Oo was commissioned as army officer after graduating from the military Officers Training School in 1955.

    After serving in various capacities Tin Oo became the army chief-of-staff in 1985 with the rank of a colonel. He was promoted to brigadier general in September 1988 and to major general in March 1990.

    In September 1988, Tin Oo was appointed Secretary 2.

    A veteran of campaigns against ethnic and communist insurgents, Lt. Gen. Tin Oo had often threatened in public to "annihilate opponents of the regime. But he rarely spoke publicly of politics and was a popular commander with the troops.

    The last official appearance of Tin Oo was on Feb. 13 when he commissioned the Tamu-Kalemyo-Kalywa highway near the Burma-India border together with the visiting Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh.

    Burma has been ruled by the military since 1962, and the current junta came to power in 1988 after a crackdown on a pro-democracy movement. The regime keeps a tight grip on the media in Burma, and the public usually knows very little about the government and its activities.

    The junta has faced intense Western criticism for stifling the opposition, which is led by Aung San Suu Kyi. She won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to bring democracy to this Southeast Asian country.
    Chavalit Yongchaiyudh: Burma visit on back-burner

    Source : Bangkok Post

    The government is back-pedalling on Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's plan to visit Burma for talks on the border dispute as his first official foreign trip.

    Surakiat Sathirathai, the foreign minister, and Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the defence minister, both said yesterday there was no urgency to go to Rangoon.

    There is no necessity to go and negotiate with Burmese leaders right now because the conflict is a border matter that is already being looked after by the security agencies and the armed forces," Mr Surakiat said.

    "The prime minister's statement about Burma being the first country he would visit was a general line of thinking that was formed even before the conflict occurred."

    Gen Chavalit said the government should not rush to solve the border problem. It was a sensitive issue which needed to be carefully studied.He denied having said he would have talks on the border problem with the Burmese junta as soon as he took the defence post, as reported by the media.

    "I never said that, but if the prime minister wants to go it is up to him. I never said it. So take it easy."

    However, he would accompany the prime minister to Burma if Mr Thaksin went there.

    The two ministers spoke before going to Hua Hin yesterday to be sworn into office before His Majesty the King.

    When the border conflict erupted a week ago, Mr Thaksin _ eager to project decisive leadership _ immediately announced that he and Gen Chavalit would visit Burma after they took office for talks on the border and other problems including drugs and illegal immigrants.

    The prime minister made no mention of his foreign minister in his remarks, made after Burmese troops seized Ban Pang Noon paramilitary outpost in Chiang Rai's Mae Fah Luang district for use as a springboard to attack the Shan State Army.

    Mr Thaksin was accused of shooting unwisely from the hip.

    Critics, including Sqn Ldr Prasong Soonsiri, a former National Security Council chief, said such an approach overrode the authority of the border committees which were negotiating with Burma.

    He put blame for the failure of talks between Thai and Burmese negotiators at the border level directly on Mr Thaksin's statement.

    The Burmese were now waiting to talk to the prime minister and the defence minister directly, he said.

    Gen Chavalit has also upset many military generals by publicly agreeing with the Burmese claim that the clash stemmed directly from the lack of a properly demarcated border.

    The generals have accused Burma of intentionally trespassing on Thai soil, knowing full well where the border was.

    Mr Surakiat said the prime minister would have discussions on the border situation today.

    "In general, the problem originates with conflicts inside Burma. Those conflicts are affecting the lives and properties of Thai people," the foreign minister said.

    Problems arising from unclear border lines would be taken care of by the border demarcation committees.

    He would consult the defence minister on whether any of the committees needed changes.

    "The policy of the government is to give importance to neighbouring countries, particularly those we have not been close to in the recent past.

    "It must be our priority to revive relations with them," Mr Surakiat said.
    Thai-Burma Border: Uneasy calm, both sides reinforce troops

    Source : Bangkok Post

    Thai and Burmese forces continued to confront each other from reinforced positions along the border as an uneasy calm prevailed in the area yesterday.

    A military source in the Pha Muang task force said both sides were awaiting orders from their governments.

    "Burma has sent forces to the border, possibly in the belief our new government will open talks and ask for the withdrawal of troops of both sides from the area," said the source.

    Burma has deployed about 1,000 more troops near the anti-Rangoon Shan State Army base opposite Chiang Rai's Mae Fah Luang district.

    Another 1,000 Burmese troops and about 500 soldiers of its ally the United Wa State Army, or Red Wa, are settled in opposite Fang and Mae Ai districts of Chiang Mai.

    The reinforcements are being viewed as preparations for an attack on the SSA rebels.

    The Burmese have set up a military command centre in the Regina Entertainment Casino in Tachilek town, after ordering all Thai employees to return home on Saturday, sources said.

    Thailand has countered by sending troops and armoured vehicles to safeguard areas prone to cross-border raids, particularly in Mae Fah Luang.The Pha Muang task force has ordered the closure of two border passes in Chiang Rai and another pass near Laos to block the supply of essential supplies to Burma.

    Than Kamnaengdaeng illegal border pass, Chiang Saen checkpoint in Chiang Rai and the Golden Triangle border pass near Laos have been closed.

    Burmese troops were reported to have earlier ordered food supplies delivered via the Golden Triangle crossing. Sources said the SSA base opposite Mae Fah Luang, which houses about 1,000 of the ethnic rebels, is the main target for Burmese forces.Col Yod Suek, chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State, said all Shan soldiers were willing to sacrifice their lives if necessary, but was confident Rangoon could not overcome them.

    "We have fought against the Burmese military junta for over 40 years and we will not give up our fight now. It's our prime duty to fight for greater autonomy," said Col Yod Suek.

    Interviewed at his Doi Kaw Wan base, the 43-year-old Shan leader said Wa forces have joined Rangoon in an attempt to crush the Shan State Army.

    A large number of weapons seized from Burmese troops during recent clashes are on display at the base-RPG launchers, mortars, assault rifles and ammunition. Col Yod Suek said China had supplied these weapons to Burma.

    He denied Burmese junta claims that Thailand has asked the SSA to help stop illicit drug production and smuggling along the border.

    It was the SSA's own policy to end drug production, which posed a threat to Shan people and the world community, he said.

    Shan efforts to fight drugs along the border opposite Mae Fah Luang district had disrupted trafficking in the area and the operations of the Burmese military and its Wa ally, he said.

    Shan sources said many young men volunteered to join the SSA and fight for independence from Burma. Shan men begin three years of military training at age 16. After completing training they are recruited by the SSA and receive a monthly salary of 300 baht. Those with the rank of lieutenant receive 600 baht a month.

    Thai authorities in Tak's Mae Sot district are preparing a protest to Burma following Saturday's shooting of a villager by Burmese troops. Mae Sot district chief Samart Loyfa said he would send the aide memoir to Burmese authorities in Myawaddy.
    Thai Officials hope for a tougher Burma stance,not cosy arrangements

    Source : The Nation

    MAE SAI- - As the country's new leadership settles into power, a growing number of Thai Army and government officials are concerned that any cosy arrangements between leading members of the Thaksin government and the Burmese generals will come at the expense of national security.

    Since the clashes between Thai and Burmese troops just over a week ago, the Thai Army, working in tandem with the Foreign Ministry, has won praise from the public for its prompt action, including the closing of the Mae Sai-Tachilek border crossing amid a heavy build-up of Burmese troops along the northern border. Many said the officials were able to act swiftly because there were no politicians around as the country was going through a change of government.

    As mortar shells were exchanged across the border, the Third Army commander, Maj-General Wattanachai Chaimuangwong, dropped an even bigger bombshell, accusing Burmese army officers of receiving kickbacks from drug dealers responsible for flooding Thailand and the world with millions of methamphetamine tablets and tonnes of heroin.

    A Pandora's Box has been opened indeed, and it will be a very long time before the bitterness subsides, especially at the local level between the Third Army and Burma's Triangle Command.

    For the time being, Thai officials say, Thaksin cannot afford to let his guard down and go soft on Rangoon over drugs and security, two issues that go hand in hand in the trouble-plagued neighbouring country.

    The Burmese government has for the past decade allowed the United Wa State Army (UWSA) to expand its stronghold in Panghsang on the Chinese border to areas adjacent to Thailand's Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai without opposition.

    Rangoon signed a cease-fire with the Wa in 1989, thus neutralising a 20,000-strong army that had enough weapons to last it another decade. The Burmese generals did not want these weapons to fall into the hands of other rebel groups, namely the Karen, Shan, Mon, Karenni and Burmese students who had fled from their campuses to the jungle to take up arms against the military regime.

    For the Wa, the cease-fire was an opportunity for them to expand their heroin trade from the Chinese border to the Thai northern border. Along the way they clashed with the arch-rival Shan army, taking a big load off Rangoon's shoulders in its war against drug lord Khun Sa.

    But with Khun Sa out of the picture since his surrender in January 1996, the cease-fire had lost some of its appeal for Rangoon. Not long after the surrender, Rangoon asked the UWSA to pull back its troops and return them to their headquarters in Panghsang, issuing two ultimatums without specifying the consequences should the Wa not comply.

    The UWSA ignored the demands and instead reached out to Thai merchants, making deals for massive infrastructure and construction projects at their new stronghold Mong Yawn, adjacent to Chiang Mai's Mae Ai district. A temporary checkpoint was opened to facilitate the flow of goods, and Thai soldiers and drug officers looked on uneasily as a new Wa city was built. Rangoon's ultimatums were dropped, and the UWSA became the buffer against the Thais that the Burmese generals were looking for.

    For a while business went well, until authorities found the bodies of nine Thai villagers beaten to death along the Thai-Burmese border in Chiang Mai's Fang district about a year ago. All fingers pointed to the Wa and their new city. Many believed the killings were the result of a drug deal gone bad. Authorities were forced to close the border, thus marking the first real attempt by Thailand to impose an economic sanction on the group.

    Around the same time, security officials came out in full force, imposing curfews on border towns in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai, and then prime minister Chuan Leekpai paid a visit to the area.

    Thai drug officials said the UWSA was responsible for flooding the country with millions of methamphetamine tablets, locally known as yaa baa, while the United States government called them the world's largest armed drug-trafficking group. A number of the UWSA's members have been indicted in the US for drug trafficking.

    Over the past year the UWSA has taken a major step towards expanding its control along the Thai border, relocating thousands of ethnic Wa and Chinese Kokang villagers from areas along the Chinese border to new cities adjacent to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces.

    Rangoon defended the move, saying it was in line with the UWSA's opium-eradication programme. The Thai Army and narcotics officials did not buy it and saw their new neighbours as a security threat.

    During last week's clashes along the northern border in Mae Sai and Mae Fah Luang districts, Thai officers on the front line insisted that Wa soldiers had been called in by the Burmese to take up positions against the Thai military as well as the Shan State Army (SSA), which Rangoon accuses of being supported by the Thai Army.

    Though the Thai government and Army have denied supporting the SSA, the Shan rebels nevertheless gained considerable stature in the eyes of the Thai public by standing up to the Burmese. Many in the area are ethnic Shan themselves.

    Meanwhile, SSA commander Colonel Yawd Serk has made it clear that he has no bone to pick with the UWSA. The two sides, he said, fought bitterly while Khun Sa was around and gained nothing by it. "The Wa are too smart to become a Burmese pawn," Yawd Serk recently told reporters visiting Doi Kaw Wan.
    Burma's Junta 'Loosens Up Around the Edges'

    Source : New York Time

    BANGKOK-- The first sign that something unusual was going on was the disappearance in Burma of editorial cartoons pillorying the country's pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as a "democracy princess," a "political stunt actress" and a "Satan of destruction."

    Then the diatribes against her that have been a staple of the state-controlled press became more muted and indirect. Soon after that, newspapers stopped printing periodic announcements of forced "voluntary resignations" of members of her political party.

    "The papers are even less interesting now than they were, if you can imagine that," said a Western resident.

    Over the past month, the reason has emerged, and it has stirred a tremor of excitement among experts watching the long, sad political standoff in the police state. For the first time since 1994, the military junta that runs the country has begun holding talks with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Both sides have suspended their war of words in a tentative period of what diplomats call "confidence building."

    Small convoys of government vehicles have been observed entering and leaving her home, where she has been confined for the past four months. Diplomats say she has been talking with top leaders of the junta who in the past refused to deal directly with her.

    But beyond this, almost nothing is known of why the military government has decided to talk, what subjects are being discussed or where this new approach might lead.

    Most experts agree, though, that there is still a clear bottom line. The military that has ruled Burma since 1962 and the current junta, in power since 1988, have no intention of giving away or sharing any substantive power.

    "At this point, the most we can expect is some loosening up around the edges," said Josef Silverstein, an expert on Burma who is an emeritus professor at Rutgers University.

    It is still possible that the talks are nothing more than a ploy to make the government appear more flexible in the hope that international sanctions will be eased and foreign aid from countries like Japan will begin to trickle in again.

    The United States and Europe have been squeezing Burma for years with political pressure and sanctions. The United States has banned new business deals there by U.S. companies and refuses visas to Burmese government officials. The European Union has scaled back contacts with an Asian regional grouping that includes Burma.

    They are responding to the quashing of a democratic movement that swelled in 1988 with a peaceful nationwide uprising that was crushed by military massacres in which thousands of people were killed.

    Two years later, in a monumental miscalculation, the military held a parliamentary election in which Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won 88 percent of the seats. The junta quickly annulled the results and instituted an even more thorough political clampdown. Late last year, it appeared that the government was determined once and for all to eliminate the National League for Democracy, jailing its members or forcing them to resign and isolating Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from her supporters.

    Now the government seems to have changed tack sharply. In its first substantive gesture, last month it released 85 members of the party who had been imprisoned during the past year. It is still believed to be still holding as many as 1,700 political prisoners, including 35 people who were elected to Parliament in 1990.

    The news has touched off a debate over whether the sanctions have caused this new softening.

    If the talks are more than public relations, several factors may be at play, and economic pain appears to be chief among them. Burma's economy is a mismanaged shambles and getting worse, with inflation rising, the currency rapidly losing value, some of the last few foreign investors pulling out, and economic growth slowing to a crawl.

    Monopolies run by the military and its cronies have skewed and sapped the economy. The World Bank recently described Burma, also known as Myanmar, as "trapped in abject poverty." A European diplomat who has not supported sanctions said he had come to believe that they were decisive. One final straw, he said, was a recommendation last year by the International Labor Organization to its 175 members to reconsider doing business with Burma.

    But other experts disagree.

    "The difference in analyses is whether the sanctions were at the heart of the economic downturn and therefore of the willingness of the government to make concessions," said David Steinberg, director of Asian studies at Georgetown University, who visited the country last month. "I say the sanctions played a minor part."

    A parallel source of pressure has come from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the regional economic grouping that admitted Burma as a member in 1997 and has mostly pursued a policy of economic and political engagement.

    More broadly, it may be that both sides in the country, like a pair of exhausted boxers, are ready to seek a way out of their futile 12-year standoff.

    Despite all its efforts, the military government is still reviled by much of the population, still struggling for legitimacy, facing enemies on all sides and reported internal rifts. It is beset by ethnic insurgencies and is so nervous about dissent that it has kept most universities closed for years.

    The democratic opposition, ground down and unable to function openly, has won nothing, although it maintains high respect abroad and continues to draw young recruits into its ranks.

    A number of experts say that at least some members of the military government would like to compromise. The junta has said for years that its goal is to shift to civilian government - though these civilians may mostly be military men in suits and ties.

    The trick is to find a way to loosen its grip without losing everything. The examples of Russia and Eastern Europe are not encouraging. So the junta hangs on.

    "Once you begin to pull that thread, the whole sweater can unravel," Mr. Silverstein said. "That's what the military is worried about."
    Japanese Nurses to help leprosy patients in Burma

    Source : The Yomiuri Shimbun

    "I hope I can eliminate prejudice against Hansen's disease (leprosy) in Myanmar through my nursing-care activities," said 47-year-old nurse Mutsuyo Ichihara. "I want to show Myanmar medical workers that nursing care should be about providing support to Hansen's patients and helping them to live the way they want to."

    Ichihara belongs to a six-member team of doctors and medical technicians being dispatched by the Japan International Cooperation Agency to the city of Mandalay in central Burma for a month. The team will leave Japan on Feb. 26.

    According to a 1998 survey, Burma has the sixth-highest rate of Hansen's disease in the world, with 10,005 sufferers.

    During her stay, Ichihara will be expected to provide nursing care to Hansen's patients. To help her in her efforts to communicate with those patients, she recently began studying Burmese.

    Ichihara spent nearly 20 years taking care of patients with chronic diseases at a national sanatorium called Tokushima Hospital. Four years ago, she was transferred to another national sanatorium--this one specifically for patients with Hansen's disease, Oshima Seishoen, which is located on an island off Kagawa Prefecture in the Seto Inland Sea.

    Ichihara is chief nurse of a ward for patients physically disabled by the disease.

    Hansen's is a curable disease and is not highly infectious. However, problems have arisen concerning the provision of suitable nursing care for those disabled by the disease and overcoming deep-rooted prejudice against its victims.
    Leading Burma general killed in helicopter crash

    By Aung Hla Tun

    YANGON (Reuters) - The man regarded as the fourth most powerful member of Myanmar's military government was killed on Monday when a helicopter carrying several high-ranking officials crashed into a river in bad weather, state media said.

    Myanmar television and radio said Lieutenant-General Tin Oo, Secretary Two of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) and chief of staff of the army, was killed in the crash at the Salwin River in Kayin state, east of the capital Yangon.

    State media said that 13 of the 29 passengers and crew aboard the helicopter had been rescued alive while 14 were still missing and two, including Tin Oo, were confirmed dead.

    Earlier, an official said two cabinet ministers were also believed killed in the crash -- Brigadier-General Lun Maung, minister at the prime minister's office, and Colonel Thein Nyunt, minister for the development of border areas.

    The area where the helicopter crashed is close to the border with Thailand, but is not near the region where bloody clashes broke out between the two countries' troops last weekend. Sources said the crash was due to mechanical failure.

    Tin Oo survived two apparent attempts on his life in the 1990s.In April 1997 his eldest daughter was killed by a parcel bomb which the authorities said was mailed to his house from Japan. Tin Oo was at home at the time, but was not injured by the blast. The government blamed the attack on Myanmar dissidents based in Japan, but opposition groups denied responsibility and said it was linked to a power struggle among Myanmar's ruling generals.

    In December 1996 two bombs exploded at a Buddhist shrine on the outskirts of Yangon after a visit by Tin Oo. The blasts killed five people and wounded 17. The government blamed ethnic Karen guerrillas, who denied responsibility.

    Last month a senior government leader dismissed talk of a split in the SPDC over landmark talks with the pro-democracy opposition led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, Secretary One of the SPDC and the country's powerful intelligence chief, told the Myanmar Times in an interview that rumours of a split within the ranks in the military had been spread by foreign media and some diplomats.

    Earlier this month, government spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Hla Min issued a statement denying rumours that some dissatisfied members of the military had been planning a coup.