Myanmar's military junta said yesterday it wondered whether the US exemption of the Karen refugees from immigration laws presaged an invasion of the country.
Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan said the last time Washington allowed an exemption from laws aimed at keeping terrorists and their supporters out was before the "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Cuba after the communist victory there.
"The US government then provided these Cuban exiles with shelter and food and then military training and weapons," he told a news conference in Mone, 260km northeast of Yangon.
"After that, in 1961, the US had these Cuban exiles invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs," he said.
"The recent exemption made by the US in their immigration law reminds us of the Bay of Pigs Invasion," he said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this month waived a law to make a group of Myanmar refugees, almost all of whom back the Karen National Union, a rebel group fighting for autonomy, eligible for resettlement into the US. As such, some 9,300 Karen refugees housed in Tham Hin camp in Thailand along the Myanmar border will no longer be viewed as terrorism supporters.
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