Burma set for further sanctions

The US action came amid a growing series of anti-government protests in Burma.

As many as 100,000 protesters led by barefoot monks marched yesterday in the most powerful show of strength yet.

After the demonstration in the country's largest city, the government issued the Buddhist clergy a veiled threat of reprisals, showing the increasing pressure the junta is under to either crack down on or compromise with a reinvigorated democracy movement.

The monks have taken their traditional role as the conscience of society, backing the military into a corner from which it may lash out again.

"It's very interesting what is happening in the country with the Buddhist monks who have joined this effort," said Stephen Hadley, the US president's national security adviser. "Our hope is to marry that internal pressure with the external pressure coming from the United States and the United Nations and really all countries that are committed to freedom to try to force the regime into a change."

The US already restricts imports and exports and financial transactions with Burma. Washington has also has also imposed an arms embargo.

The authorities did not stop the protests yesterday, even as they built to a scale and fervour that rivalled the pro-democracy uprising of 1988 when the military fired on peaceful crowds and killed thousands, terrorising the country.

The government has been handling the monks gingerly, wary of raising the ire of ordinary citizens in this devout, predominantly Buddhist nation.

However, last night the country's religious affairs minister appeared on state television to accuse the monks of being manipulated by the regime's domestic and foreign enemies.

Meeting with senior monks at Yangon's Kaba Aye Pagoda, Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung said the protesting monks represented just 2% of the country's population.

He suggested that if senior monks did not restrain them, the government would act according to its own regulations, which he did not detail.

The current protests began on August 19 after the government sharply raised fuel prices in what is one of Asia's poorest countries. But they are based in deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the repressive military government that has ruled the country in one form or another since 1962.

"I don't like the government," a 20-year-old monk participating in the protest in the central city of Mandalay said. "The government is very cruel and our country is full of troubles."

The protests over economic conditions were faltering when the monks last week took over leadership and assumed a role they played in previous battles against British colonialism and military dictators.

At first the robed monks simply chanted and prayed.

But as the public joined the march, the demonstrators demanded national reconciliation - meaning dialogue between the government and opposition parties - and freedom for political prisoners, as well as adequate food, shelter and clothing.

The fleeting appearance of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi at the gate of the Yangon residence where she is under house arrest squarely identified the protests with the longtime peaceful struggle of her party, the opposition National League Democracy.

She has been under detention for 12 of the past 18 years.

In what appeared to be a miscalculation by the junta, a crowd of about 500 monks and sympathisers was let through police barricades on Saturday to her home, where she briefly greeted them in her first public appearance in four years.

Yesterday's march was launched from the Shwedagon pagoda, the country's most sacred shrine, and 20,000 monks took the lead.