Burma Leader Backs Move for Multiparty Rule

Confronted by a widening campaign of civil disobedience, Burma’s newly appointed president Wednesday threw his weight behind a restive public’s demand for multiparty democracy.

“We want liberty, peace and civility,” President Maung Maung, who took office just five days ago, declared over Radio Rangoon. “We will not be stubborn any more.”

He said an emergency session of the ruling, military-dominated Burma Socialist Program Party will be held Sept. 16 to hear his demand for a referendum on an open political system. “If the Congress refuses to hold such a referendum, I and all 14 members of the party central executive committee will resign,” Maung Maung said.

The announcement, monitored here on radio and televised nationally in Burma, capped a day of developments that clearly indicate that the government realizes it has lost all public support:

-- In the face of three days of massive, nonviolent demonstrations in the capital of Rangoon, the northern city of Mandalay and elsewhere, Maung Maung’s regime revoked martial law and lifted the night curfew imposed in Rangoon by his predecessor, Sein Lwin, a hard-line former general who was driven from office by bloody protests in which, some diplomats estimate, at least 1,000 were killed.

-- Burmese soldiers were pulled off the streets, giving the demonstrators the run of Rangoon.

Maung Maung, Burma’s former attorney general, said that neither he nor any top officials of his regime would seek office if a referendum approved national, multiparty elections.

The government’s move appears to meet the protesters’ key political demand, but the volatile issue of political prisoners remains. The broadcast said 200 were released Wednesday, but hundreds more remain in detention.

The protest movement also faces the challenge of putting together one or more opposition parties if the referendum is approved.