Myanmar agrees charter outline after 14 yrs

Yangon, Sep 3: Myanmar's military junta completed the first stage of drawing up a new constitution today after 14 years working out the broad outline of a ''discipline-flourishing democracy'', a delegate said.

Acting Prime Minister and National Convention chief Lieutenant-General Thein Sein told the 1,000 hand-picked delegates that actually drafting a new charter could begin now the ''detailed basic principles'' underpinning it had been decided.

Under a seven-stage ''roadmap to democracy'' unveiled in 2003, a referendum and election would then be held, and a parliament convened, he was quoted as saying.

He made no mention of any timescales.

Western diplomats have dismissed the roadmap as a sham to cement the generals' grip on power in the former Burma, under military rule since a 1962 coup.

Opposition parties such as Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's National League of Democracy (NLD) have boycotted most of the proceedings of the National Convention, which opened in 1993.

Diplomats and reporters for foreign media were barred from the Convention's official closing ceremony, held at an army camp north of the former capital, Yangon.

Reuters>