US 'loses patience' with Burma

Aung San Suu Kyi attracts large crowds wherever she goes

The United States says it has lost patience with Burma after the military junta's repeated refusal to release the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

In an interview with the BBC, a US assistant secretary of state Lorne Craner said that if the current level of international pressure on Burma did not produce results, Washington was prepared to apply even more pressure, including imposing further economic sanctions.

Measures already being considered by Congress include freezing the assets of Burma's leaders, banning imports from Burma and restricting travel to the country.

The UK says it has learned that Aung San Suu Kyi is being held in a two-room hut in a prison outside Rangoon, following her detention on 30 May.

UK foreign office minister Mike O'Brien said Aung San Suu Kyi had no access to family or lawyers, and no appeal process.

But Burmese Foreign Minister, Win Aung, has indicated that Aung San Suu Kyi's detention will continue.

The opposition leader was taken into what Burma called "protective custody" after a convoy she was travelling in was attacked by what the US called government-sponsored thugs.

Economic sanctions

Lorne Craner, assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labour, told The World Today: "We have lost our patience with Burma."

He said he hoped tougher economic sanctions would help bring about change.

Aung San Suu Kyi: life in pictures

"Burma has to rely to an extent on the US and Europe in its economy," he said.

"But they also have to rely on their neighbours and their neighbours are beginning to lose patience as well."

Earlier this week the South East Asian regional forum, Asean, issued an unprecedented call for Aung San Suu Kyi's release - breaking its policy of non-interference in member-states' internal affairs.

There was no mention of any sanctions against Burma.

But Mr Craner told the BBC: "We think they took an important step in for the first time criticising one of their own members."

The BBC's Burma analyst Larry Jagan says US and European Union trade with Burma is so small that Western-led sanctions will have little effect.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won 1990 elections by a landslide but the military junta refused to hand over power.

The democracy leader has spent much of the last 13 years under house arrest. Last May she was released after nearly 20 months of detention at her lakeside home in Rangoon.

In the run up to her release, Aung San Suu Kyi was involved in secretive United Nations-sponsored talks with the military rulers, raising hopes of a breakthrough. But progress has since stalled.