News & Articles on Burma-Thursday, 22 September, 2011-uzl

News & Articles on Burma

Thursday, 22 September, 2011
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Aung San Suu Kyi foresees change in Myanmar
Anti dam protests erupt in Myanmar
Controversy Over Dam Fuels Rare Public Outcry in Myanmar
West 'should respond to Burma change', says think-tank
Myanmar's forgotten bourse eyes long-awaited expansion
Burma ‘not ready for unions’: minister
Suu Kyi urges world to keep eye on Burma
UN told Burma has no nuclear weapons
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Aung San Suu Kyi foresees change in Myanmar
News DeskSeptember 21, 2011 19:02

Aung San Suu Kyi, foresees "signs of real change very soon" in Myanmar but has urged the world not to take its eye off her country.

Suu Kyi, speaking via fuzzy satellite linkup to a gathering of former and current world leaders in New York led by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, sections of which were broadcast on the BBC, said:

"I've had talks with some of the representatives of the government and we hope that we are going to see signs of real change very soon.

"There has been a lot of talk about change, but people always want to see something concrete. And they're right, too. Talk is never enough. But at least it's a beginning. And I think we're beginning to see the beginning of change."

Aung San Suu Kyi, 66, is head of the National League for Democracy, which won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but was unable to wrest power from the military junta.

A Burmese opposition icon, Suu Kyi has herself has been either imprisoned or under house arrest for a combined 15 years since she returned to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, from England in 1988, according to Bloomberg. She was released last November and has since held talks with the country's nominally civilian government, she said.

According to AFP, Suu Kyi downplayed comparisons with so-called Arab Spring revolts in North Africa and the Middle East that brought down decades-old dictatorships and were facilitated by social networking sites.

"I don't think the [social] media has quite the position here that it had in the Arab countries," she said, referring to Myanmar's tightly controlled Internet use. "In Burma, we do not have such a developed communications system."

However, she said, all people around the world "can understand 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

India and Pakistan are the powerhouses of South Asia as well as historic enemies. How do their military forces stack up today?

Last week's winner compares the military might of two continually feuding countries. Check the membership site in late-September for a link to completed piece.

"The idea of freedom and security, beautifully balanced, is a concept that is acceptable to human beings across the world. This is what we know: people want to be free and they want to feel secure as well," she said, Bloomberg reports.

Fellow Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, also speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative forum in New York, told Suu Kyi that seeing and hearing her left him "like a smitten young man."

"I love you!" Tutu, who turns 80 next month, told Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi told him the feeling was mutual.

"I must return the compliment and say: 'I love you,'" she replied, News24 reports.

Tutu added, "quite seriously," that he was looking forward to visiting Myanmar upon her inauguration as "head of government there."

Suu Kyi also said that she hadn’t expected her struggle to take so long:

"All journeys are made step by step. To be quite honest, I didn't think when I first started out in the movement for democracy... I'd have to devote my whole life to it." http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/110921/aung-san-suu-kyi-new-hope-myanmar-burma-democracy
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ONE-WORLD NET
Anti dam protests erupt in Myanmar
22 September 2011

Myanmar’s activists have launched a series of nation wide campaigns to oppose construction of a hydroelectric dam at Ayeyarwady River in Kachin. Dam construction has forcefully displaced over 15,000 people across sixty villages without resettlement plans from the State.

Yangon: Resistance is growing to a hydroelectric dam being built at the beginning of the Ayeyarwady River in Myanmar's northern Kachin State, with several campaigns to halt construction under way.

Opponents to the Myitsone Dam have been collecting signatures, circulating posters, organizing meetings, and speaking out to foreign media. Some residents affected by the dam project have remained in their villages as a form of silent resistance.

myanmar.jpg
More than 15,000 people could be displaced/ Photo credit: Contributor/IRIN

"The government should listen to the voice of the people, if they really practise a democratic system," Bauk Char, a Kachin activist, who has been calling for a halt to the dam's construction, told IRIN.

Environmentalists say the dam, with a flooding area larger than Singapore, will have a devastating impact on the environment and livelihoods. More than 15,000 people in 60 villages are being forced to relocate without proper resettlement plans, according to the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG).

"This kind of undemocratic resource exploitation by the Burma [Myanmar] military government can never be sustainable and never lead to peace and reconciliation in Burma," Ah Nan, a KDNG spokeswoman, said. "War has already started in Kachin State and will only get worse if this exploitation continues."

Fighting broke out in June between government forces and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the military wing of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), ending a 17-year ceasefire and displacing more than 25,000 people.

The dam - a joint effort by Myanmar's military government and the China Power Investment Corporation - is expected to produce 6,000MW of electricity that the government will sell to China, bringing in more than US$500 million annually. Construction began in 2009, just 1.6km below the confluence of Mali and N'Mai rivers - the natural heritage and cultural heartland of the Kachin people, locally known as Myitsone.

"We'll never back down"

Resistance to the project has escalated in response to a recent announcement by Zaw Min, Minister of Electric Power, who said at a press conference in Naypyidaw, the capital, that the government would proceed with the project despite objections. Government officials maintain the dam will not affect water levels on the Ayeyarwady River, nor have any adverse environmental effects, saying it will utilize only 7 percent of the water flow.

"We'll keep working on the Myitsone Project. We'll never back down," Zaw Min said. "We won't halt this project in spite of objections from environmental groups."

Zaw Min is also being criticized for saying the government is providing as much as 1,500MW for domestic use - way beyond current demand. That is why the government, he said, can sell surplus electricity to other countries in the future.

"This is not true," said Myat Thu, an organizer for one of the campaigns to save the Ayeyarwady, Myanmar's longest river, which provides millions of people with a livelihood. "A large part of the country has seen severe power shortages."

According to government figures, only 2,000 out of about 60,000 villages across the nation have access to electricity. Some parts of Yangon, the country's largest city and commercial capital, experience frequent blackouts.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate, has joined the growing appeals to save the Ayeyarwady and called for a reassessment of the Myitsone Dam, which would be 152m high when it is completed in 2017.

"We'll keep raising the public awareness [on the dam issue] by holding talks, by delivering stickers, etc.," said Win Cho, a politician and activist calling for a halt to the dam project. "We will keep inviting more people to join with us."

Source : IRIN http://southasia.oneworld.net/todaysheadlines/anti-dam-protests-erupt-in-myanmar
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Controversy Over Dam Fuels Rare Public Outcry in Myanmar
The International Herald Tribune
The Myitsone dam under construction on the Irrawaddy River in northern Myanmar.
By THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
Published: September 21, 2011

MYITSONE, MYANMAR — The massive dam under construction in this remote corner of Myanmar is generating a litany of concerns that are not uncommon to such projects: about the risks of tampering with nature, about damage to wildlife, about the displacement of villagers.

But for many people in Myanmar, also known as Burma, the fears surrounding the Myitsone dam go much deeper. It will be the first dam across the Irrawaddy River, the iconic, even mythic waterway that has given life to centuries of Burmese civilization.

Passions are high. A government minister broke down in tears at a news conference last month when asked about the dam. High-ranking officials are said to be sharply divided over the wisdom of the project.

And in an authoritarian country that has begun to experiment with looser controls on the news media, the controversy has raised the prospect of something exceedingly unusual: that public outrage might actually force the government to reconsider its plans.

The Myitsone dam will flood an area four times the size of Manhattan. Government officials who support the project say it will be an invaluable source of electricity and cash, a milestone in Myanmar’s development. Critics say it will cause irreparable damage to the Irrawaddy, the lifeline of millions of Burmese downstream.

“The people are demanding to stop the project,” said U Ludu Sein Win, a dissident writer who is one of the most outspoken critics of the dam. “If the righteous demands of the people are ignored and they continue the dam project,” he wrote in Weekly Eleven, a popular Yangon-based newspaper, “the people will defend the Irrawaddy with whatever means possible.”

Such strident criticism of a government project in the domestic media, which would have been unheard of just months ago, reflects both the passions surrounding the project and the easing of some restrictions on expression by Myanmar’s new, at least nominally civilian government, which took office in March after decades of overt military dictatorship.

The Myitsone dam, which is being built and financed by a Chinese company, has also become a lightning rod for criticism about China’s power and influence in Myanmar.

Here at the dam site, Chinese workers in orange hard hats have been tunneling, blasting and shoring up riverbanks. The site is a few kilometers downstream from what is considered the “birthplace” of the Irrawaddy — the confluence of two smaller rivers — a place that has mystical value for the Kachin ethnic group that populates the hills of northern Myanmar. (The Kachin have a substantial army that has battled with troops from the central government in recent months, underscoring the instability in the area surrounding the dam site.)

Criticism of the project has been allowed to spread through Facebook, blogs and even local newspapers, suggesting that the government itself may be divided on the issue. Last month the country’s most famous dissident, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has otherwise been cautious in her criticisms of the government since her release from house arrest last November, penned an open letter calling for the project to be reassessed.

Critics’ reasons for opposing the Myitsone project vary. Some say they are angry because the decision to begin such a huge project was made without public consultation. Others channel their frustration toward China, which plans to import 90 percent of the electricity the project generates, under financial conditions that have not been fully explained to the public.

“China has colonized Burma without shooting a gun and has sucked the life of the people of Burma with the help of the Burmese regime and its cronies,” wrote U Aung Din , a former democracy advocate who is now in exile in the United States. “Now, they are killing the Irrawaddy River as well.”

In April, four small blasts were reported at the camp in Myitsone where Chinese workers have their sleeping quarters. No one was seriously hurt.

But perhaps the greatest concern among critics of the dam is that it will further degrade a river that has played such a crucial role in Burmese history.

The Irrawaddy draws on glacial waters from the eastern extremities of the Himalayas. As it travels south, the river carries nutrients into Myanmar’s arid central region and ultimately fans out in the Irrawaddy Delta, an area of rice paddies so fertile that it once fed large parts of the British empire in Asia. Like the Mekong or the Mississippi, the river carries enormous symbolism.

“It is the most significant geographical feature of our country,” wrote Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi in her letter, which also aired concerns about the dam being near an earthquake fault zone. The Irrawaddy, she wrote, is “the grand natural highway, a prolific source of food, the home of varied water flora and fauna, the supporter of traditional modes of life, the muse that has inspired countless works of prose and poetry.”

Indeed, leading poets have chimed in on the controversy, including U Maung Sein Win, who wrote a short poem called “Dead River,” which includes this passage:

Whole forests are cleared and
mountains laid bare

Sand bars emerge at the narrows

Not so far in the future, Myanmar’s people may disappear

Did we drink our own blood?

This is the frightening thought

That one day the river might be dead.

Unaccustomed to such a barrage of criticism, the government is on the defensive. The information minister, U Kyaw Hsan, wept when questioned about the project at a news conference in August. “We love the Irrawaddy,” said Mr. Kyaw Hsan, who is a retired brigadier general.

“We will protect the Irrawaddy just like other citizens would.”

The government official responsible for the dam, U Zaw Min, was adamant at a meeting this month that it would be completed. “We will never rescind it,” he said at one of the occasional news conferences that appear to be gestures by the government toward openness.

But his staunch defense of the project led to further anger.

On Saturday, at a government-sponsored seminar, Mr. Zaw Min seemed ready to offer concessions to minimize the impact of the dam and “ensure the project poses no danger.” Those words were highlighted in bold in an account of the seminar that appeared in the state-owned newspaper The New Light of Myanmar. The dam would be built to resist a thousand-year flood and an earthquake of magnitude 8, the article said.

That was the official account of the meeting. In the Burmese-exile news media, reports said a “heated argument” over the dam had broken out between officials. Myanmar’s president, U Thein Sein, considered by many to be a moderate force in the government, was said to be against the project, according to The Irrawaddy , an online news service based in Thailand. Hard-liners were said to be pushing ahead. The accounts could not be confirmed.

Critics of the dam say it is significant that skepticism of the project extends even to the scientists who were hired by the Chinese project managers to assess it.

China Power Investment , a state-run Chinese company, signed a deal in 2007 with the Burmese government to build seven dams in northern Myanmar, including the one at Myitsone. Although not required to do so under Myanmar’s laws, China Power Investment hired scientists from China and Myanmar to assess how the dam would affect the environment. In 2009, the scientists submitted a report of nearly 900 pages that seemed to question the dam’s very premise.

“If Myanmar and Chinese sides were really concerned about environmental issues and aimed at sustainable development of the country there is no need for such a big dam,” said the report, which was written in choppy English.

Rather than build the massive Myitsone dam, the scientists’ report suggests constructing two smaller dams farther upstream. It warns ominously that the Myitsone site is “less than 100 kilometers from Myanmar’s earthquake-prone Sagaing fault line,” a distance of a bit more than 60 miles.

The report also predicts “substantial losses” in fish populations downstream, and says that more time is needed to understand how wildlife in the area would be affected. Scientists who fanned out into the nearby jungles found sun bears, leopards, elephants, many types of monkeys and red pandas, an endangered auburn-colored animal that resembles a cross between a raccoon and a bear.

The report also recommends that more research be done on the potential effects on other inhabitants of the region: people. The dam is still several years from completion, but thousands of villagers have already been resettled from their rice paddies and fishing villages into prefabricated homes. They were given, among other compensation, 21-inch television sets.

“We can’t make a living in our new place,” Aung San Myint, a father of three who now mines the riverbanks for flecks of gold, told a reporter. “There’s nothing for us there.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/asia/controversy-over-dam-fuels-rare-public-outcry-in-myanmar.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
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BBC News
22 September 2011 Last updated at 12:00 GMT
West 'should respond to Burma change', says think-tank
By Rachel Harvey BBC South East Asia Correspondent

An influential think-tank has urged Western nations to acknowledge and support what it calls the major changes taking place in Burma.

The International Crisis Group (ICG) says there is now a unique opportunity to engage with the country's relatively new civilian-led government.

But some pro-democracy campaigners remain wary of easing the pressure on the Burmese leadership.

They say they want to see concrete signs of genuine reform.
'Not assured'

The ICG says there is growing evidence that the new administration in Burma is serious about reform and Western powers should adapt their policies to reflect the new reality.

The group is calling for a proactive and engaged approach to grasp what it calls this unique opportunity.

The group has long taken the view that sanctions have failed. But there is a new urgency in the tone of its argument now.

The Burmese government has made a number of conciliatory gestures in recent weeks - easing restrictions on the media, allowing a visit by the United Nations human rights envoy and holding meetings with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

But opinion is divided as to how the outside world should respond.

Some pro-democracy campaigners are urging caution, saying the steps taken by the Burmese government thus far are merely superficial.

Until or unless all political prisoners are released and a process of genuine national reconciliation is under way, they say, Western pressure and sanctions should be maintained.

Perhaps the most influential voice in this debate is that of Aung San Suu Kyi.

In her view there are signs that change is now possible in Burma, but she says "it is not yet assured". Few would disagree with that. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15018276
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Myanmar's forgotten bourse eyes long-awaited expansion
22/09/2011 - 3:36 - By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - In a quiet room in an ageing office block of Myanmar's commercial capital Yangon, a worker scribbles on a whiteboard beneath a row of out-of-sync clocks, updating prices in what could be the world's smallest stock market.

Welcome to the Myanmar Securities Exchange, among the best-kept secrets of a repressive country hamstrung by Western sanctions and blighted by 49 years of military rule.

There's no trading floor, no flashing screens and no televisions showing financial news channels. Just eight employees who handle over-the-counter transactions and manually update share prices, using a whiteboard, a marker pen and a stencil. Every so often, a customer drops by.

Set up 15 years ago as a joint venture with Japanese broker Daiwa Securities Co, Myanmar's stock market has attracted just two companies -- an echo of broader problems in the resource-rich country that half a century ago was among Asia's wealthiest and today is among its poorest.

But as Myanmar's new civilian government presses ahead with reforms that could lead to greater political and economic freedom, and as China pumps in billions of dollars to develop its vast energy reserves, plans are a afoot to expand the exchange.

Daiwa is working with the Tokyo Stock Exchange to establish rules and computer systems for a bigger stock market, a Daiwa spokesman said. The plan expands on Daiwa's 50-50 joint venture established in 1996 to set up the current exchange with Myanmar's Finance and Revenue Ministry.

"With the new administration, there has been growing interest in developing a financial system, so we, Daiwa and the Tokyo Stock Exchange are now in cooperation to contribute to the development of Stock Exchange system," Daiwa said in an e-mailed response to questions from Reuters.

Mainland Southeast Asia's biggest country has been one of the world's most difficult for foreign investors, restricted by sanctions, starved of capital and marred by mismanagement.

But its eight-month-old parliament is stirring hopes of reforms that could slowly open the country of 50 million people that just over 50 years ago was one of Asia's most promising, the world's biggest rice exporter and a major energy producer.

A senior official from the Ministry of National Planning and Economic Development said the government wanted to expand the number of listed companies as part of efforts by the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) of which Myanmar is a member, to form an interlinked stock market by 2015.

"The emergence of a stock exchange is very important for us in bringing the country in line with the rest of ASEAN," said the official, who asked not to be identified.

"Some important laws have already been drafted. After enacting these laws, the Securities and Exchange Committee will be formed. Then there will be rapid progress," he predicted.

That ambition is one of many signs of change since the army nominally handed power to civilians after the first elections in two decades last year, a process ridiculed at the time as a sham to cement authoritarian rule under a democratic facade.

Recent overtures by the government hint at possibly deeper changes at work -- from calls for peace with ethnic minority guerrilla groups to some tolerance of criticism and more communication with Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was freed last year from 15 years of house arrest.

The push to expand the bourse also underlines how competition is heating up among regional exchanges in Asia's so-called frontier markets following recent South Korean forays to help build stock exchanges in Cambodia and Laos.

TRICKLE OF CUSTOMERS

Myanmar's first stock exchange was closed in the 1960s after a military takeover. Its successor, the Myanmar Securities Exchange Centre (MSEC), is a modest operation. A trickle of customers each week buy and sell shares in two listed companies on a bourse few Burmese or foreign investors know exists.

No new companies have signed up beyond the first two: Forest Products Joint Venture Corp (FPJVC) and Myanmar Citizens Bank. Both are jointly owned by the government and private investors.

For those who got in early, returns have been generous. FPJVC sold shares between 1993 and 1996 -- mainly to well-connected bureaucrats -- and has delivered dividends of about 25 percent a year, more than double local bank interest rates.

"If possible, we'd like to buy some more shares of FPJVC," said Zaw Win, 76, a retired officer from the Ministry of Forests whose 15 shares bought in 1993 have more than doubled in value.

Daiwa signed a deal on April 5, 1996, to start the exchange but within a month the pact was cast into uncertainty, as the military junta began rounding up hundreds of pro-democracy supporters in a crackdown on Suu Kyi.

That sparked outcry in the West. Thousands of pro-democracy supporters rallied in Yangon. U.S. soft drink giant PepsiCo Inc sold its stake in a Burma venture. U.S. apparel firms cancelled contracts with Burmese suppliers. The White House urged Burma to halt its "pressure tactics."

A year later, in response to widening human rights abuses, the United States imposed sanctions. The junta tightened its grip on power. Economic reforms withered.

The exchange's executive director, Soe Thein, a former official in the Finance and Revenue Ministry, assembled a small team of staff to draft laws and regulations, raise public awareness and set up a securities exchange commission to achieve his dream of a capital market within five or six years.

"But it failed to come up to our expectations," he said.

Much like neighbouring Thailand and India, which both have thriving capital markets, Myanmar has enormous potential for tourism and development, boasting rich natural resources -- from gas to teakwood and gemstones.

Its new government has promised sweeping reforms -- from tax reductions for exporters to micro loans for farmers, interest rate cuts on bank loans and higher returns on savings. In recent weeks it has sought input from the International Monetary Fund about unifying its official and unofficial exchange rates.

The recent gestures followed expansion of fledgling banking and telecommunications sectors and the privatisation of hundreds of state assets from late 2009, including mining firms, an airline, gas stations, cinemas, shipping companies and factories, albeit mostly to cronies of the former army regime.

But its banking system is crippled by sanctions, which most expect to stay in place until the government releases an estimated 2,100 political prisoners.

Soe Thein, however, remains optimistic.

"It takes time to set up public companies," he said.

And his little bourse may even soon face competition. South Korean bourse operator Korea Exchange said in January it had sent a delegation to Myanmar to hold preliminary talks with the government about the possibility of opening a separate exchange.

The firm is already involved in running the new Laos Securities Exchange and is setting up a long-delayed stock market in Cambodia. Both are joint ventures with the respective governments.

(Additional reporting by Timothy Kelly in Tokyo; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Jason Szep and Robert Birsel) http://www.eleconomista.es/empresas-finanzas/noticias/3393146/09/11/Myanmars-forgotten-bourse-eyes-longawaited-expansion.html
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Burma ‘not ready for unions’: minister
By AHUNT PHONE MYAT
Published: 22 September 2011

The current political situation in Burma makes the formation of labour, farmers’ and student unions untenable, and future efforts at organizing will be tightly monitored by the government, Information Minister Kyaw Hsan told MPs yesterday.

Unions have in the past existed in Burma, but were gradually stamped out following the start of military rule in 1962. Although not illegal, a clause in the 2008 constitution states that their formation is conditioned on not being “contrary to the laws enacted for [Burma’s] security, prevalence of law and order, community peace and tranquillity, or public order and morality”. The subsequent definitions for these criteria are vague.

Kyaw Hsan said the government was concerned that unionizing would see a recurrence of the problems that occurred during Burma’s brief spell of democracy following the end of British rule in 1948, when many were formed as proxies for parties vying for political clout.

He cited the use of farmers’ unions by Burma Communist Party leaders in the 1950s to impose their control over the agriculture sector and to confiscate farmland, an issue strikingly familiar to government practice today.

As such, he suggested, Burma would have to wait until the political landscape became more stable before they could be reintroduced.

The government is also notoriously intolerant of perceived dissent, something that it fears the formation of unions could encourage. More than 30 labour activists, including eight female members of the Federation of Trade Unions Burma (FTUB), are imprisoned in Burma out of a total of nearly 2000 political prisoners.

When the time is right for their reintroduction, Kyaw Hsan said, they would need to operate under the government, and according to as yet unwritten government guidelines. An MP who wished to remain anonymous said there would likely be widespread antipathy towards this from workers.

“Limitations like this should not exist in the democratic era, and instead the government should allow the existence of independent associations,” he said, adding however that certain regulations must exist, although unions should be able to operate independently.

Other MPs have said that it begs the question of how committed the government is to following its own promises of democratic reform. http://www.dvb.no/news/burma-%E2%80%98not-ready-for-unions%E2%80%99-minister/17778
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BANGKOK POST
Suu Kyi urges world to keep eye on Burma

Published: 22/09/2011 at 12:32 AM
Online news: Asia

Burma's pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi urged the world Wednesday not to take its eye off her country as it enters what she said were the first small steps to freedom.

This picture taken on September 13, shows Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi speaking to AFP during an interview at her National League for Democracy (NLD) headquarters in Yangon. Suu Kyi urged the world Wednesday not to take its eye off her country as it enters what she said were the first small steps to freedom.

In a rare appearance via videolink from Burma -- also known as Burma -- to an international conference in New York, Suu Kyi said the political thaw needs close scrutiny by the outside world.

"What we really need is awareness of what is going on in our country," she told the audience of political and business leaders at the Clinton Global Initiative.

"If the world wants to help Burma, the world needs to know what's going on in Burma. You really have to follow what is going on there."

Suu Kyi, who was released by Burma's military rulers last November after years of house arrest, said the status quo was changing.

But "change is not always for the better and even if it is for the better, it's not always sustained," she warned. "We would like the world to keep an eye on what's happening."

Suu Kyi also had a message for India and China, the growing regional powers that she said should focus on their relations with Burma's people as much as its controversial government.

"We've always been good neighbors," she said, without elaborating, "but times have changed and circumstances have changed, and to continue to be good neighbors, certain policies have to change."

Smiling but looking tired, the 66-year-old Nobel peace laureate was given a standing ovation by the New York forum.

In fluent English and a quiet voice, she said that change in her country had a long way to go.

"All journeys are made step by step," she said. "To be quite honest, I didn't think when I first started out in the movement for democracy... I'd have to devote my whole life to it."

She said her participation in the videolink, as well as recent meetings with foreign journalists and talks with the government, showed an improvement.

"This is the kind of thing I could never have done," she said, "so we are making progress. But we need more."

But she downplayed comparisons with so-called Arab Spring revolts in North Africa and the Middle East, where youth-led protesters organized through social networking sites have brought down, or continue to challenge, decades-old dictatorships.

"I don't think the (social) media has quite the position here that it had in the Arab countries," she said, referring to Burma's tightly controlled Internet use. "In Burma, we do not have such a developed communications system."

Hardest of all, she said, would be overcoming years of enmity.

"The reconciliation bit is sometimes the most difficult of all because both sides have to be prepared to compromise and give and take."

After meeting with President Thein Sein last month, Suu Kyi said she was cautiously hopeful -- but looking for results.

"We hope that we are going to see signs of real change very soon. There had been a lot of talk about change but people want to see concrete signs," she said. "I think we are beginning to see the beginning."

Suu Kyi's party won a 1990 election but was never allowed to take office. It boycotted an election held last year, the first in two decades, and was delisted as a political party by the regime as a result.

Recently, however, the regime has adopted a more conciliatory stance toward its opponents and relaxed its grip on access to independent information, such as previously blocked news sites, including the Burmese-language service of the BBC. http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/asia/257689/suu-kyi-urges-world-to-keep-eye-on-burma
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ABC Radio Australia News
UN told Burma has no nuclear weapons

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was concerned about Burma gaining nuclear weapons.

A senior diplomat from Burma has told the United Nations atomic agency the south east nation doesn't have enough economic strength to develop nuclear weapons.

Last year, a United Nations report suggested North Korea might have supplied Burma as well as Iran and Syria with banned atomic technology.

The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in 2009 she was concerned about the possible transfer of such technology to Burma from North Korea.

Burma's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency Tin Win attended the agency's annual state meeting on Wednesday.

He says Burma would like to restate it's in no position to consider the production and use of nuclear weapons.

He says it also doesn't have enough economic strength to do so. http://www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/201109/3323755.htm?desktop
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