ေဒါက္တာလြဏ္းေဆြ

ကုလသမဂၢ ဌာေနကိုယ္စားလွယ္ကို ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရက ျငင္းပယ္ျခင္းအေပၚ
စိတ္ပ်က္မိေၾကာင္း အတြင္းေရးမွဴးခ်ဳပ္ ေၾကညာခ်က္ထုတ္ျပန္

Gambari in Myanmar amid row

Sat Nov 3, 2007 12:49 PM BST
By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari returned to army-ruled Myanmar on Saturday as a row over the junta's move to kick out the U.N.'s top resident diplomat overshadowed his mission to coax the generals to reform.
Gambari was greeted at Yangon airport by U.N. country chief Charles Petrie, who was told by the regime on Friday he was no longer welcome after highlighting a deepening economic crisis that fuelled mass protests crushed by the army in September.
Journalists were barred from seeing Gambari, but a U.N. official said he left Yangon on a government plane for the junta's new capital, Naypyidaw. Petrie did not accompany him.
The Nigerian diplomat, on his second visit to the former Burma since the crackdown which official media says killed 10 but diplomats say many more probably died, aims to persuade the junta to enter serious talks about political reform with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
But the six-day mission has been complicated by the generals' decision not to renew Petrie's credentials.
"Burma's generals will do anything to avoid being pressured into talks about genuine reform," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"But now the danger is that Gambari will spend his time talking about the U.N.'s role in Burma instead of the need to end the crackdown and bring real reform. Gambari should stick to his agenda instead of falling for such cheap ploys".
Singapore said it was disappointed by the move against Petrie, who had been summoned to Naypyidaw for an official dressing down for a statement he released on the October 24 United Nations Day, which Myanmar said had tarnished its image.
"It also sends an inconsistent message about Myanmar's willingness to continue engaging the U.N. in improving its domestic political and socio-economic situation," Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Singapore is currently the chair of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations, one of the few international groups to admit Myanmar as a member. The city-state is also one of the biggest investors in the former Burma.
The United States condemned Petrie's apparent expulsion.
"This outrageous action the day before the arrival of U.N. Special Envoy Gambari in Burma is an insult to the United Nations and the international community," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "has full confidence in the United Nations country team and its leadership," his spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said on Friday, adding that he endorsed the views in the statement issued by Petrie.
It was not known when Petrie would leave the country.

Authority in Arakan Conducts Targeted Census
11/3/2007

Maungdaw: Burmese military authorities in Arakan State are now conducting a census of adults aged between 18 and 45 in the north of the state, but the reason for the collection of the information is still unknown, said a clerk from Maugndaw.
"I do not know why the authority is collecting the list of young peoples' statistics. All wards and villages in Maungdaw Township were ordered to send the list of young people to Western Command headquarters," the clerk said.
The order came out after the conclusion of the Western Command organizing committee's annual meeting, which was held in Ann, Arakan from 28 October to 31 October. Many high level army officers at the rank of major and above were in attendance.
The clerk also said that Maungdaw Township's Mayaka, or township administrative offices, also sent information to Western Command headquarters last week on the strength of military-backed organizations like the USDA, Women's Affairs, the mother and children organization, the veteran's organization, people's militias, and village administration.
This is the first time for the collection of data on young people and members of government-backed organizations by the military authorities and many ordinary officials are curious about the reason for the census, the clerk concluded.