Myanmar fuel protests spread to northwest oil city

YANGON, Aug 28 (Reuters) Rare dissent in military-ruled Myanmar against soaring fuel prices spread to the oil-producing northwest today, where a 200-strong crowd of mostly Buddhist monks protested in Sittwe, a local source said.

The march lasted at least an hour down a road in the centre of the coastal city, where analysts say living conditions and power shortages are particularly dire even though it is the centre of the former Burma's oil industry.

The marchers chanted slogans against this month's shock rises of diesel and gas prices and some monks held religious flags, the source said.

Key players in a mass uprising against decades of military rule in 1988, the monasteries have so far stayed out of the week-long series of small but defiant protests in Yangon.

However, rumours have been swirling around the former capital that more radical elements within the monkhood were considering entering the fray.

In the latest act of defiance in Yangon, around 50 people staged a march through the north of the city before being stopped by men in civilian clothes, witnesses and the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) said.

Eight people were arrested, NLD spokesman Nyan Win said.

''When they first started the march there were just over 20 people, but it grew up to about 50 people when they were arrested,'' he said, adding that labour rights activist Suu Suu Nway was among the marchers but not those detained.

''She fainted while running to escape arrest so her colleagues took her to hospital,'' he said.

Pro-junta gangs and armed and secret police continue to stake out sensitive areas of the city in one of the most far-reaching crackdowns since 1988.

Then, up to 3,000 people are thought to have been killed when the junta sent in the troops to stamp out unrest.

Now, around 70 people have been detained so far, including Min Ko Naing, the second-most prominent opposition figure after detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

Min Ko Naing -- a Burmese nom-de-guerre meaning ''Conqueror of Kings'' -- was a key leader of the student movement in 1988 and still wields significant influence.

Htay Kywe, another prominent member of the so-called ''88 Generation Student Group'', remains in hiding, having escaped a Yangon-wide manhunt in which cars and buses have been stopped and searched and trains and ferry terminals monitored.

The world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar has become one of Asia's most ruined countries after 45 years of unbroken army rule.

Suu Kyi, whose NLD won a 1990 election by a landslide only to be denied power by the military, has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years in prison or under house arrest.

REUTERS LPB PM1701