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DEMOCRACY
Suu Kyi meets Myanmar army chief as power transition looms
by Staff Writers
Yangon (AFP) Jan 25, 2016


Bomb attack in Laos kills two Chinese: state media
Beijing (AFP) Jan 25, 2016 - A suspected bomb attack in Laos killed two Chinese citizens and injured one more, Beijing's official news agency Xinhua said Monday.

The world's second-largest economy has been pouring money into the sleepy Southeast Asian nation, a fellow Communist state, over the last several years and became its largest investor in 2014.

Xinhua identified one of the victims as an employee of a Chinese mining company operating in the mountainous centre of the country.

The victims were on board a vehicle when the incident happened on Sunday, it cited the Chinese embassy in Vientiane as saying.

The blast, which it repeatedly described as an "attack", occurred in Xaysomboun province, it said.

Unexploded ordnance is an enduring problem in Laos. During the Vietnam War US warplanes dropped more than two million tonnes of munitions in some 580,000 bombing missions aimed at cutting North Vietnamese supply lines through the country.

An estimated 30 percent of the devices failed to detonate and 50,000 people have been killed by the explosives since the end of the war.

China's foreign ministry confirmed the deaths, describing the incident as a "violent attack" but not giving details of the method or the suspected motive.

"We advise Chinese citizen to increase security precautions," foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular briefing.

The Chinese embassy in Vientiane said in a statement that two of its staff had visited the injured survivor, a civilian surnamed Zhou, in hospital.

A special envoy of Chinese president Xi Jinping is scheduled to go to Laos this week, Xinhua reported separately, following a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry. He met the Lao prime minister Monday as the US courts its former wartime foe.

President Barack Obama is due to travel to the rural landlocked nation later this year for a summit of Southeast Asian countries, marking the first visit by a US president.

Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's powerful army chief held fresh talks Monday on the country's dramatic political transition, days before a military-dominated legislature hands over to the most democratic parliament in generations.

The discussions are the latest effort to smooth the transfer of power following a landslide victory for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in November elections, which is set to transform the once-cloistered nation after decades under military rule.

The meeting saw "friendly and open discussions about the formation of a new government, the transition, post-election peace and stability, the parliament and peace process", according to a statement posted on the NLD's official Facebook page late Monday.

Observers see a rapprochement between Suu Kyi, 70, and the military chief as crucial to ensuring the political handover stays on track.

The two-hour closed-door meeting was their second since the elections.

Victorious National League for Democracy MPs will take their seats in parliament in the capital Naypyidaw on February 1.

Min Aung Hlaing also released a statement on his Facebook page accompanied by photographs of the meeting, including one of him in military uniform shaking hands with a smiling Suu Kyi wearing a vivid green traditional "longyi" skirt.

Myanmar is gripped by speculation over who will become the next president. Suu Kyi, currently barred from the role by an army-drafted constitution, has vowed to rule "above" the next leader.

Observers say this could put her at loggerheads with the military, which retains huge political and economic power.

The new parliament will choose between three presidential candidates -- selected by elected politicians in the two houses and by the military, which under the constitution holds a quarter of the legislature's seats.

The new leader will replace incumbent President Thein Sein in late March, finalising a protracted political transition which he began in 2011 after almost half a century of outright military rule.

Suu Kyi, whose independence hero father is considered the founder of Myanmar's modern army, called for national reconciliation following her party's sweeping election win.

But the NLD retains the scars of its similar landslide in 1990 polls. The results were ignored by the military, which dug in for another two decades.

The junta kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for some 15 years, as part of its repressive response to the democracy movement.

Relations have thawed tentatively in recent years as the Nobel laureate entered parliament under Thein Sein, a former general who has won praise for shepherding the long-isolated nation's return to the international fold.


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