Word: aung
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...first high-level team of U.S. diplomats to visit Burma in 14 years met with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon on Wednesday in what some hope may signal the first steps toward breaking the political deadlock that has gripped Burma for more than 20 years. But Burma analysts say any positive developments from the mission will depend on a man the Americans did not meet: Burma's reclusive military leader, General Than Shwe...
...expectations are modest," says Aung Zaw, editor of the Irrawaddy, an influential Thailand-based magazine on Burma affairs. "We've seen these on-again, off-again discussions many times before with the United Nations and the European Union, among others." Real change, he said, could come only from Than Shwe, the supreme leader since 1992 of the military committee that rules the country and calls itself the State Peace and Development Council. Describing Burma as an oligarchy, Aung Zaw says that if Than Shwe had the political will, "he could solve 40 years of Burma's problems in four hours...
...Aung Zaw credits Campbell, who specializes in East Asian and Pacific affairs for the White House, with being well informed on Burma issues. It was unlikely the regime could pull the wool over his eyes, as it has done to other prominent visitors, he says: "Campbell met and listened to everyone, whether they were Burman, ethnic minorities, proregime or antiregime. Everyone was pleased with that...
...terms of her house arrest after an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home. Her initial three-year prison sentence was commuted to 18 months of house arrest because, said the order read aloud in court, Than Shwe "desires ... to exercise leniency upon her." (Read "Burma Court Finds Aung San Suu Kyi Guilty...
...Military defector Aung Lynn Htut is unconvinced. He warns that his former commander will do anything to discredit Suu Kyi, a longtime supporter of Western sanctions. Than Shwe met Webb as part of a campaign to portray the Nobel laureate as "the enemy of the Burmese people [who] is too stubborn to lift sanctions," he says. But even Suu Kyi's pro-sanctions stance is no longer a given. U.S. engagement was "a good thing," she admitted recently through a spokesman for her National League for Democracy party...