UN to consider request for Myanmar junta's seat

The Associated PressPublished:
September 10, 2008 UNITED NATIONS:

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will ask a committee to consider a request from the winners of Myanmar's 1990 elections to replace the country's current military junta representatives at the United Nations, the U.N. said Wednesday.
The letter from pro-democracy candidates elected to parliament 18 years ago challenged the legitimacy of the military government that refused to cede power after a landslide victory by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. The junta has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, ever since.

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said any decision on who should represent a country at the United Nations is up to the General Assembly's Credentials Committee, which will meet soon after the 63rd session of the assembly opens on Sept. 16. World leaders will arrive the following week for their annual ministerial meeting.

"The secretary-general can only convey this letter ... (and) it will be conveyed," she said.

Daw San San, vice president of the Members of Parliament Union (Burma), said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press that the organization has set up a permanent mission to the United Nations and has appointed U Thein Oo as its permanent representative to the U.N.


"His excellency U Thein Oo is instructed to represent the people of Burma and the legitimate, democratically elected members of parliament in all organs of the United Nations," San said.

Oo was identified as an elected representative from Mandalay.

Myanmar's U.N. Mission said Ambassador Kyaw Tint Swe was not in his office Wednesday afternoon to comment.

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962 and has been widely criticized for suppressing basic freedoms. The current junta, which took power in 1988 after crushing pro-democracy demonstrations, held general elections in 1990 but refused to cede power to Suu Kyi's NLD. Since then, the country has been in political deadlock.

Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years. For about the last three weeks, the 63-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has refused daily food deliveries to her home to protest her ongoing detention, according to her political party.

http://www.iht. com/articles/ ap/2008/09/ 10/news/UN- UN-Myanmar- Credentials. php