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Ban hails Webb's Myanmar mission

Ban hails Webb's Myanmar mission

By AFP

UNITED NATIONS: UN chief Ban Ki-moon welcomes US Senator Jim Webb's weekend talks in Myanmar with junta leader Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, his press office said Monday.

UN deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Ban, currently on home leave in South Korea, noted Webb's weekend visit and "welcomes his engagement with Myanmar leaders as well as Aung San Suu Kyi towards a peaceful, united, democratic Myanmar with full respect for the human rights of all its people."

Webb became the first US official to speak with Than Shwe and also conferred with detained Suu Kyi without winning her freedom.

The 64-year-old Suu Kyi was found guilty earlier this month of breaching the terms of her house arrest after John Yettaw, an eccentric US former military veteran, swam to her lakeside villa in May and stayed there for two days.

Than Shwe commuted Suu Kyi's sentence to 18 months under house arrest, but this would still rule her out of elections due to be held next year.

The UN secretary general, who visited Myanmar last month, has repeatedly appealed to Myanmar's rulers to free Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

Suu Kyi has been kept in detention for nearly 14 of the past 20 years, since the military regime refused to recognize her National League for Democracy's landslide victory in elections in 1990.

Ban has made clear that he expects Myanmar's rulers to honor their pledge to declare an amnesty for an unspecified number of political prisoners.

Okabe meanwhile said that Ban also hailed Yettaw's release on humanitarian grounds by the military regime from a sentence of seven years' hard labor.

Webb said Sunday as he flew out of Myanmar with Yettaw that the former US military veteran, who is 54 and suffers from epilepsy and diabetes, had suffered what he called a medical episode even as he was being deported.