Suu Kyi being protected from assassination, says junta

Burma’s foreign minister today said that pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is being kept in custody to protect her from an assassination attempt, and added that no timeframe can be given for her release.

"We have heard there were assassins coming in the country. I don’t know who their target will be,” said foreign minister Win Aung.

But if “anything happened to her it will be blamed on us,” he told reporters in Phnom Penh where he will attend an annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference beginning tomorrow.

“We know that whatever happened to her will be real trouble to us. Because everything will be blamed (on) us and there will be attempts to create a situation where the country will be in deep anarchic situation.”

Although the government has said in the past that she is in “protective custody,” this is the first time that an assassination theory has been put forward.

Win Aung refused to say who the possible assassins were or why they would target Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi was detained on May 30 after a clash between her supporters and a pro-government mob in northern Burma. She has been kept incommunicado since then, jeopardising the reconciliation process to end the country’s 15-year-old political deadlock.

But Win Aung said the government’s commitment to democracy remains undiminished.

He said Suu Kyi is not in detention but in custody to make sure that she comes to no “personal harm” adding that the government never had any “intention of harming” Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma’s national hero, Aung San.

“She is our national leader’s daughter she is like our sister,” he said.

He said Suu Kyi could be harmed “not by the government, (but) by anybody who would like to create a situation where we might be going into a blown up situation”.

In the meantime, he said, the government cannot give a committed date for her release.

“Don’t press us to commit ourselves to a timeframe and date of releasing her ... the important thing is that the will (to free her) is there,” he said.

The current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy movement. It called elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power after Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party won.

She was kept for several years under house arrest, and a UN-mediated national reconciliation process started in October 2000 has made little progress.

On Saturday, Burma’s state-run press blamed Suu Kyi for the May 30 clash that led to her detention, and said the violence showed she was incapable of running the country.

The government says members of Suu Kyi’s party instigated the violence when her motorcade was confronted by thousands of military supporters.

But opposition accounts say pro-government thugs ambushed Suu Kyi’s motorcade, stabbing and beating her followers as they neared the town of Depayin.

If Suu Kyi “caused a violent clash because she had not been able to deal with a group of peaceful protesters, it is hard for us to believe her utterances that she is capable of dealing with matters concerning ethnic problems and the whole country”, the state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper said in a commentary.

Her detention has evoked an international outcry from world leaders including US President George W Bush and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who have demanded her release.

The foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Burma is a member, will meet with foreign ministers of other Asian and Pacific countries on Wednesday at a regional security meeting.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is scheduled to attend, is expected to deliver a stern message to ASEAN on its reluctance to press Burma to release Suu Kyi.