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Myanmar blasts US report

Myanmar's military government yesterday said a recent US government report on human-rights abuses in the country is "riddled with errors" and fails to note steps Myanmar has taken toward democracy.

"Regrettably, the US has lost its credibility on human right issues," a government statement said, citing alleged abuses by the US in its global war on terror.

The US State Department said in its annual report on the state of human rights worldwide that the situation had worsened in Myanmar during 2003.

It cited a May 30 attack by government-affiliated forces on a convoy led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Several hundred pro-democracy supporters and activists were missing, under arrest, wounded, raped or dead from the incident, the report said.

"The State Department's report on Myanmar is poorly researched, riddled with errors and ignores the many positive developments that have taken place in the past year," said the statement, seen in Bangkok.

One glaring omission, it said, was last year's announcement of a "road map to democracy" that would eventually give Myanmar a constitutional government.

It said the State Department had failed to note that American economic sanctions had created great hardships for ordinary Myanmar citizens, especially women in the garment industry, and lacked credibility because of America's own human rights abuses such as torture of prisoners taken in Afghanistan.

Myanmar, under military rule since 1962, has been widely criticized for imprisonment and torture of political dissidents, repression of the pro-democracy movement and violence against ethnic minorities.

Critics say the road map gives no time frame for achieving democracy and note that Suu Kyi, who heads the opposition National League for Democracy, remains under house arrest.
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