Burma adjourns constitution talks

Tuesday, 31 January 2006
According to BBC News.

Burma's military junta has adjourned its latest round of talks aimed at drawing up a new national constitution. The government said the closed-door process, known as the National Convention, would reconvene later this year.

The authorities say the National Convention is a key part of its roadmap to democracy.

Critics say the talks are worthless, largely because Aung San Suu Kyi's pro-democracy party is boycotting them.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been in detention or under house arrest since May 2003.Delegates at the convention are hand-picked by the military.

The latest session of the National Convention began in December.

Delegates are believed to have debated citizenship principles and the future role of the armed forces, but there have been no clear reports of any decisions taken.

"It will reconvene around the end of the year when the harvest is over," one delegate quoted Lieutenant-General Thein Sein as saying at the closing ceremony.

Burma's harvest period is October and November.

Scepticism

The convention was started in 1993, with the aim of drawing up a constitution as a first step in a seven-point plan, known as a "roadmap to democracy".

But there is widespread scepticism about the junta's promise to initiate democratic changes.

The delegates spend weeks at a secluded army compound Rangoon, a process a senior UN official once compared with to mass house arrest.

Burma has not had a constitution since the junta seized power in 1988.

The regional grouping the Association of South East Asian Nations recently expressed its impatience with the speed of Burma's democratic reform.

It arranged to send Malaysia's foreign minister to Burma to check on progress, but the junta said earlier this month it was too busy to receive him.