US wants UN Council action against Myanmar's junta

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 28 (Reuters) US Ambassador John Bolton has announced he was seeking a UN Security Council resolution telling Myanmar's junta to stop flooding the region with refugees escaping its repressive policies.

The draft resolution would call on Myanmar, which the United States calls by its former name of Burma, to comply with ''its obligations to reduce this downward spiral of its performance that constitutes a threat to international peace and security,'' Bolton said.

He told reporters after council consultations he expected to produce a text ''within the next few days or weeks.'' But Russia, a permanent council member with veto power, was among those who immediately made clear Myanmar did not constitute an international threat to peace and security, which is the council's mandate, participants at the meeting said.

Aware of opposition, Bolton said, ''The resolution will focus on those elements of the government's policies that do threaten stability in the region and more broadly.'' Bolton argued that a million Burmese were living abroad and that the junta had not done enough to curb the trafficking of people and of narcotics. Its policies, he said, also enhanced the likelihood of transmission of ''highly contagious diseases across international borders,'' such as AIDS and malaria.

The resolution would not immediately include sanctions but ''lay out what we expect Burma's performance to be,'' he said.

Bolton spoke after a briefing by Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.

undersecretary-general for political affairs, who recently returned from Myanmar. He was allowed for the second time since May to see detained Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

''Her health is fair considering the circumstances of her prolonged detention,'' Gambari said. ''She asked to have more regular visits by her doctor and I'm pleased to note that on November 16 she was allowed to see her doctor.'' The military has run Myanmar under various guises since 1962 and the current group of generals took power in 1988. Suu Kyi has been in and out of house arrest after her National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990.

Gambari said he raised with the country's military leaders the need to release all political prisoners and to grant permission for UN agencies to deliver humanitarian assistance.

As he spoke, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was weighing whether to stay in Myanmar because of government restrictions, including insistence that an official be present at interviews with prisoners. The United Nations estimates the junta has more than 1,100 political prisoners.

Gambari also said he spoke about forced labor and the fighting with ethnic minorities, tens of thousands of whom have been forced to leave their homes.

''There's a national convention (about a new constitution) that is going on, a lot of momentum, but in our view this is not an all-inclusive process,'' Gambari said.

But he said the government told him that after a constitution was written Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy ''will be allowed to contest elections under the new constitution.'' ''None of the issues raised or suggestions I raised were rejected so they are all on the table and we are just waiting for concrete action on their part,'' Gambari said.

Reuters DH VP0415