Asean leaders urged to ban Burma from Bali summit

September 27, 2003 (AFP)

A Malaysian opposition party has urged Asean leaders to ban Burma from
their summit in Bali unless democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is released
unconditionally.

The move by Burma's military junta to place Aung San Suu Kyi under
house arrest after she had been detained for months in a secret location
was "too puny" and completely unacceptable, said Lim Kit Siang, chairman
of the Democratic Action Party (DAP).

"Since Burma has been rebuffing all well-intended Asean overtures and
initiatives to bring it back to the mainstream of civilised
international relations, it is time that Asean stop treating the Burmese military
junta with kid-gloves," Lim said in a statement.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations' (Asean) leaders
must send a "strong message" to Burma by excluding it from their October
7-8 summit until Aung San Suu Kyi is released unconditionally, he said.

Malaysia has already rejected calls for Myanmar to be excluded from the
Asean summit, saying that isolating Yangon would not be productive.

Recent visits by Indonesian ex-foreign minister Ali Alatas and Thai
Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai to Myanmar had produced only
"meaningless optimism" about the country's so-called seven-point roadmap for
democracy, Lim said. Asean should also withhold support for the
proposed roadmap, he said.

Warnings ignored

Burma also ignored warnings from Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir
Mohamad, who played a key role in bringing Rangoon into Asean in 1997,
that it could be expelled for its continued intransigence, Lim noted.

Mahathir, in an interview with AFP in July, made it clear that Burma
might be expelled from Asean as a last resort if it continued defying
world pressure to release Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 elections by a landslide but has
been denied power by the military, spent nearly four months in
detention at a secret location before being taken to a private Rangoon hospital
last week where she underwent major surgery for a gynaecological
condition.

She was discharged late Friday and taken to her lakeside villa
accompanied by two doctors, to begin her third stint under house arrest since
beginning her political career in 1988. -