Thousands attend Myanmar rebel leader's funeral

MU AYE PU, Myanmar, Dec 26 (Reuters) Thousands of friends and some foes of Myanmar's ethnic Karen rebel movement paid their respects today at the funeral of veteran guerrilla leader Bo Mya, held along the Myanmar-Thai border.

The Christian ceremony was held at the rebel's Mu Aye Pu camp, 600 km north of Yangon, with 3,000 people, including a small delegation of Myanmar troops and Thai soldiers, paying homage from dawn.

''He is our hero and warrior who had served the Karen people until his last day,'' General Mutu Saepo of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) said in a speech, which was followed by a salute fired from M-16 rifles.

Bo Mya, whose Karen National Union (KNU) has waged guerrilla war against the central government since 1949, died on Saturday in a Thai hospital near the border after suffering from diabetes, heart disease and having been wheelchair-bound for several years.

The KNU and its armed wing, the KNLA, have been fighting the central government in Yangon since the year after the country, then called Burma, won independence from Britain.

The coffin of Bo Mya, who died at the age of 79, was interred in a concrete structure on a small sand hill on the Myanmar side of the Moei river, which marks the border with Thailand.

Exiled Myanmar political dissidents and Karen civilians crossed the river from Thailand to attend the funeral.

Despite the death of Bo Mya, the KNU's struggling for autonomy would continue, a key rebel official told Reuters.

''KNU objectives remain the same. Nothing changes,'' said Colonel Nerdah Mya, a son of Bo Mya and a battalion commander.

''If they want to continue to talk the ceasefire talks, we will. But if they don't, we will continue to fight on.'' After seizing power in 1988 from another set of generals, Myanmar's current military rulers signed ceasefires or peace pacts with about two dozen ethnic minority guerrilla groups in the country's jungle hinterlands.

The KNU reached an informal ceasefire with the junta in December 2003 after talks brokered by then military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt, with whom Bo Mya once said he had a good rapport.

But a formal peace deal was never signed after Khin Nyunt was ousted in October 2004 and fighting resumed.

REUTERS MS HS2005