By EDITH M. LEDERER,

AP

Posted: 2007-11-03 00:16:42

UNITED NATIONS (AP) – A newly introduced U.N. General Assembly resolution would strongly condemn the Myanmar government’s crackdown on peaceful protesters and call on the military junta to immediately release all those arrested and all political prisoners.

France circulated the draft on Friday night, the eve of U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari’s return trip to Myanmar to try to promote reconciliation talks between the junta and the pro-democracy movement, and just days before the U.N. human rights expert on Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, makes his first visit to the country since November 2003.

If approved by the General Assembly’s human rights committee, the resolution would then need the backing of the 192-nation world body. General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but they do reflect world opinion.

The draft resolution “strongly calls” on the junta to provide Gambari with unrestricted access to all parties – including ethnic minority representatives, student leaders and dissident monks – and to engage with him to achieve “effective progress towards the restoration of democracy and the protection of human rights in Myanmar.”

It also calls on the government to cooperate fully with Pinheiro by granting him “full, free and unimpeded access” and ensuring that no person or organization that cooperates with him “is subjected to any form of intimidation, harassment or punishment.”

The draft “strongly condemns the use of violence against peaceful demonstrators who were exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and expression and to peaceful assembly and association and expresses condolences to the victims and their families.”

The draft resolution “strongly calls” on Myanmar’s government to “exercise utmost restraint and to desist from further arrests and violence against peaceful protesters and to release without delay those who have been arbitrarily arrested and detained, as well as all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally.”

It singles out pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi who leads the National League for Democracy and her deputy Tin Oo, Shan Nationalities League for Democracy leader Khun Htun Oo, and 88 Generation Students group leaders Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi. Their organization comprises activists whose generation was bloodied as young students in Myanmar’s 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

Myanmar’s junta took power in 1988 after crushing the democracy movement led by Suu Kyi. In 1990, it refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide election victory. Since then, Suu Kyi has been in and out of detention, kept in near-solitary confinement at her home.

The current protests began Aug. 19 after the government hiked fuel prices in one of Asia’s poorest countries. But they are based in deep-rooted dissatisfaction with the repressive military rule that has gripped the country since 1962. The protests were faltering when Buddhist monks took the lead.

The draft resolution expresses “grave concern” at the ongoing human rights violations in Myanmar including arbitrary detentions in response to peaceful protests and Suu Kyi’s continuing house arrest and discrimination against ethnic minorities.

It criticized Myanmar’s decision to bar Suu Kyi’s party and other political and ethnic groups from a convention to draft guidelines for a new constitution, “and the slow pace of the democratic reform.”

The draft resolution also expresses serious concern at “the continuous deterioration of the living conditions and the increase of poverty affecting a significant part of the population throughout the country.”

It “strongly calls” on Myanmar to lift all restraints on peaceful political activities, end the recruitment and use of child soldiers and take urgent measures to end military operations targeting civilians in ethnic areas.