BY SEAN HEALY
The military regime which has ruled Burma for nearly 40 years may be about to not only release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest but form a power-sharing government with her party, the National League for Democracy.
Speculation about such a dramatic move began when Thailand's defence minister, Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, traditionally close to Burma's generals, told the Bangkok Nation that secret talks underway between Suu Kyi and the military were aimed at forming an interim government involving the NLD.
"Once all groups are engaged in a national government and get to work, confidence among the former rivals will soon be established," said Yongchaiyudh. "After a while, a new election should be held."
Chavalit's comments were backed by General Chetta Tanajaro, a senior adviser to Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Burma matters. The comments come only two weeks after Shinawatra's first visit to Rangoon.
While there's been no official confirmation of the reports from Rangoon, and rumours are always rife in the Burmese capital, there have been some indirect signals from regime figures that the military has a two- to four-year timetable for the transition.
The regime has taken some of the most significant "confidence-building" steps to date, including releasing more than 29 NLD parliamentarians from detention centres since June. The party has also been allowed to open its first office outside the capital since a crackdown closed nearly 40 of its offices in 1998.
Faced with a deep economic crisis brought on by decades of misrule and international isolation, Rangoon's generals hope that loosening their control may allow countries keen to invest in Burma, especially Thailand and Japan, to do so without fear of international condemnation.
Frustrated by long years in the wilderness, more moderate 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the Burmese democracy movement also seem keen on a compromise solution, even if it means going back on the movement's longstanding demand that the military recognise the results of the 1990 elections, which the NLD overwhelmingly won.
Others in the democracy movement are critical and suspicious of the secret nature of the talks. Until the latest revelations, it had been thought that talks had halted early in the year.
In a statement released on the 39th anniversary of the military's bombing of the student union building on Rangoon University, the All-Burma Federation of Student Unions said that, if it was sincere, the regime would release the "thousands" of imprisoned students, including the leader of the 1988 uprising, Min Ko Naing.
"Although the military regime and Aung San Suu Kyi have been involved in secret talks, these students have not been released and live in terrible conditions," the federation said.
Meanwhile, in the Thai town of Mae Sot, just across the border from Burma, Thai authorities have deported more than 700 Burmese workers who entered the country without papers in less than two weeks.
More than 60,000 Burmese labour in factories in the area for half the Thai minimum wage.
The deportations are believed to be a Thai government gesture of rapprochement to Rangoon, after several months of clashes and heated words over the flow of drugs across the border.