China tells UN Myanmar can solve its own problems

BEIJING, July 10 (Reuters) Myanmar is not a threat to regional security and must be allowed to solve its own problems, China said today following a visit by the UN envoy pressing for relaxation in the Southeast Asian country.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Adviser on Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, visited Beijing yesterday as part of a regionwide effort to ''promote positive changes'' in military-ruled Myanmar, where democracy icon and Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest.

China, a neighbour and long-time supporter of the former Burma, has sought to promote dialogue between the isolated junta and Washington, recently hosting a meeting between the top US diplomat for Southeast Asia and ministers from Myanmar.

But the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman's comments in the wake of Gambari's meetings with senior diplomats suggested that Beijing would resist any fresh U.N. Security Council moves against Yangon.

''China said it hopes that, as a neighbour, Myanmar will have stability, economic development and ethnic concord and harmony,'' spokesman Qin Gang said of talks with Gambari.

''Myanmar's issues should be solved by the Myanmar people themselves,'' he added later.

Early this year, Beijing and Moscow earned Yangon's thanks for rejecting a Washington-backed draft resolution in the UN Security Council pressing the regime to stop persecuting minority and opposition groups.

VETO POWER Russia and China, among the five permanent Security Council members whose veto automatically kills a resolution, argued that human rights violations were not a matter for the council unless they endangered regional or international peace and security.

Qin signalled that China wanted to continue keeping Myanmar away from Security Council resolutions.

''China believes that the situation in Myanmar does not constitute a threat to regional or international peace and security,'' he told a news conference.

Alongside Sudan, Iran and North Korea, Myanmar is among the states widely shunned by the West with which Beijing has sought to keep ties. India has also courted closer links with Myanmar.

China has sold millions of dollars worth of weapons to Yangon, invested in helping it upgrade naval facilities, bought large amounts of its timber and minerals, and is pursuing energy projects there.

Those interests -- as well as bonds forged when Myanmar and China were both treated as pariahs by the West following army massacres of pro-democracy activists in Yangon in 1988 and Beijing in 1989 -- help Myanmar survive political isolation and trade embargoes.

Following his talks in Beijing, Gambari was to travel to New Delhi today and then on to Tokyo for further meetings, a UN announcement said.

Myanmar opposition leader Suu Kyi spent another birthday under house arrest last month as her supporters released doves and balloons to accompany prayers for her release.

To mark her 62nd birthday, around 300 supporters gathered at the dilapidated headquarters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won an election landslide victory in 1990 only to be denied power.

REUTERS AM BD1619