NLD Members Invited to Naypyidaw

By ARKAR MOE
The Irrawaddy News

Four leading members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) were invited by the Burmese military government on Thursday to go to the capital, Naypyidaw, according to the opposition party.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Friday, a representative of the NLD, Ohn Kyaing, said that four members of the party’s central executive committee (CEC)—Thankin Soe Myint, Than Tun, Nyunt Wai and Hla Pe—had been invited to travel to Naypyidaw on Friday, though they were not told why or who they would meet with.

Ohn Kyaing said that the Burmese authorities had contacted the CEC members through the NLD’s chairman, Aung Shwe, and had offered to take the four from Rangoon to the capital with “government transportation.”

“These are the four members who met with the UN secretary-general in July,” he said. “In fact, the military authorities selected and invited our members according to their own criteria. We had no say in who would go.”

On Thursday, NLD spokesman Nyan Win said he had heard about the invitation, but had received no agenda or details about the proposed meeting.

“I think this invitation may be related to US Senator Jim Webb’s visit the same day, he said.

Webb is scheduled to meet with high-ranking regime leaders, including Sen-Gen Than Shwe,” said a statement issued by his office.

“If the Than Shwe meeting takes place, it will be the first time that a senior American official has ever met with Burma's top leader,” the statement said.

Webb, the chairman of the East Asia and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is known to support a pro-engagement policy with the military regime. Burma is the first country he will visit on an Asian fact-finding tour.

According to the senator’s official Web site, his trip is to “explore opportunities to advance US interests in Burma and the region.”

The senator said in April that the US needed an “aggressive diplomatic posture” on Burma, but one that was more “constructive.”

Webb is the first US lawmaker to visit Burma in a decade. There was no word from the senator’s office if he would meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader, or has made a request to the junta in that regard.

Webb, who served in Vietnam as a Marine Corps officer, has had a long personal involvement in Asian and Pacific affairs that predate his time in the US senate.

In addition to his more recent visits as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Webb has worked and traveled throughout the region, from Micronesia to Burma, for nearly four decades, as a Marine Corps officer, a defense planner, a journalist, a novelist, a Department of Defense executive and as a business consultant.