September 2, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 4, 1424

BANGKOK, Sept 1: Myanmar on Monday denied US allegations that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has begun a hunger strike, just days after the junta unveiled a plan to shift the country towards “democracy”.

The government “dismisses the claim by the US State Department deputy spokesman that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is on a hunger strike. The statement is groundless,” according to a foreign ministry statement released through Yangon’s embassy in Bangkok.

Washington said it had learned that Aung San Suu Kyi had launched a hunger strike while being detained by the military, without revealing how it had obtained such information, nor when she had started the strike.

It also warned Myanmar authorities they were fully responsible for her health since placing her under detention after a May 30 ambush on her convoy as she made a political tour of the country’s north.

Its claims followed a Saturday announcement by Myanmar’s newly appointed Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt of a seven-point roadmap to democracy including “free and fair” elections to be held under a new constitution.

No time frame was given for the elections, however, and observers in Yangon dismissed the speech as a rehash of previous promises to restore a tightly circumscribed form of democracy to Myanmar.

The junta said in its statement that the US move was “an attempt to overshadow recent political developments in Myanmar,” mainly the democracy roadmap.

In an earlier statement, the junta did not explicitly confirm or deny Washington’s claim, instead describing it as “quite odd.”

Amnesty International said on Monday it was “gravely concerned” about the bombshell US announcement and called for the democracy icon’s immediate release.

“Amnesty International is gravely concerned by the US State Department report that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), is on a hunger strike in protest at her three-month detention,” the London-based group said in a statement.

“The organization calls on the State Peace and Development Council (the military junta) to release her immediately and unconditionally,” it said.”

In the Myanmar capital a group of veteran politicians fired off a letter to Khin Nyunt expressing their concerns that the Nobel peace laureate may have embarked on such an act of protest, and called on the government to resolve the crisis. —AFP