Pro-junta gang halts Myanmar protest march

YANGON, Aug 23 (Reuters) A gang of supporters of Myanmar's military rulers halted a small protest march in Yangon today against dramatic fuel price rises and tried to force 30 people onto trucks to take them away.

A tense stand-off ensued as the protesters, who had been walking towards the headquarters of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), refused to get into the trucks.

A Reuters reporter was prevented from taking photographs.

On Wednesday, the junta arrested 13 top dissidents and deployed armed police and gangs of spade-wielding supporters on the streets of the former capital to squash protests against soaring fuel prices and falling living standards.

There was no word on the fate of the 13, who included Min Ko Naing, the former Burma's second-most prominent political figure after detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, five women and a man picked up by members of the junta's feared Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) movement after a small protest yesterday were released.

For the second day, truckloads of USDA men armed with spades and brooms were seen taking up positions in the city centre.

However, in an apparent concession to the widespread public anger at last week's surprise and massive fuel price rises, bus fares for the shortest journeys were halved.

Last week, the junta doubled diesel prices and raised compressed natural gas prices five-fold, measures that brought Yangon's bus networks to a standstill and angered many in the city of 5 million people.

The world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar is now one of Asia's poorest countries after more than four decades of unbroken military rule.

REUTERS JT RAI1028