Human Rights on the table

Bush will arrive in Bangkok on Wedensday as part of his Asian tour which also takes him to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing on Friday.

Some 10 Burmese people including Irrawaddy magazine's editor Aung Zaw and other Bangkok-based political activists will lunch with Bush and discuss a wide range of issues about the situation in Burma.

First Lady Laura Bush, who has campaigned for human rights in Burma for years, will meet separately with Dr Cynthia Maung at her border clinic in Mae Sot.

Observers said the highprofile meeting might merely be symbolic without any real impact on the situation in the neighbouring country.

Yawd Serk, chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State and commander of the armed dissident Shan State Army, will not join the lunch with Bush and has sent an open letter asking the US to put more pressure on the junta to hand over its power to the Burmese people.

Like North Korea, Yawd Serk said in his letter, the junta has never cared about people's well being but concentrated only on the development of military power.

The junta had tried to possess nuclear facilities for military purposes. It sent officers to Russia to study nuclear technology. With 30 Russian scientists, the regime has been building three underground nuclear factories in Ho Pone township, Taunggyi, Shan State, as well as in May Myo and Thapeik Kyin in Mandalay division, Yawd Serk said.

The current military junta, also known as the State Peace and Development Council, has ruled Burma since an uprising in August 1988. It refused to transfer political power to the National League for Democracy which won a landslide victory in a general election in 1990.

The regime, which has launched crackdowns on the popular uprisings many times over the past two decades, planned to hold another election in 2010 but the international community doubts its sincerity in being prepared to hand over administrative power to any civilians who might win the election.

The US and the European Union have put pressure and sanctions on the military regime for years but these efforts have yielded no positive results in Burma's political development.