Army Arrests Politicians in Myanmar

This nation’s military reportedly seized 10 more opposition politicians Wednesday, bringing to about 90 those held in a crackdown designed to scuttle a meeting sponsored by Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Most of those detained were elected members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, or NLD, which plans to hold its first congress Sunday since a sweeping election victory in 1990.

A source close to Suu Kyi said “the number has gone up to 90,” but the figure could be higher as news of detentions across the country slowly trickled in.

The source said the crackdown, the worst since Suu Kyi’s release, was expected.

Myanmar’s foreign minister, Ohn Gyaw, said the reports of detentions were “fabricated,” Japan’s Kyodo news agency said.

The army has run Myanmar since the 1960s, crushing an uprising in 1988 and suppressing democracy activists. But after releasing Suu Kyi from house arrest in July after six years of detention, it has been more circumspect.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that “the Burmese government has told us that the detainees have not been imprisoned, but instead are being held at so-called government guest houses--their term, not mine--for questioning.”

“This is yet another in a long series of outrageous and oppressive measures against democrats,” Burns said. “Nothing can justify the detention of 91 people who simply wanted to meet to talk about the activities of their group.”

Also on Wednesday, Burmese opposition leader Sein Win--who is prime minister of the exile National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma and a cousin of Suu Kyi--urged the U.S. Congress to impose economic sanctions on Yangon’s military government.

The recommendation was opposed by the State Department, which supports the restoration of democracy in Myanmar but rejects imposition of sanctions, and John Imle, president of Los Angeles-based Unocal Corp., which is trying to develop a natural gas field off the coast of the Southeast Asian nation.