ASEAN voices "revulsion" at Myanmar violence

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The Association of Southeast Asian Nations voiced "revulsion" on Thursday at the killings in Yangon and sternly demanded that fellow member Myanmar stop using violence against demonstrators.

In unusually blunt language for the group, the nine other foreign ministers said they were "appalled to receive reports of automatic weapons being used" on crowds and demanded the Myanmar government "immediately desist from the use of violence against demonstrators."

Nine protesters were killed in Myanmar's main city, Yangon, on Thursday when soldiers and police fired on crowds protesting decades of army rule and economic hardship, state media said. They were the country's biggest pro-democracy demonstrations in two decades, led by Buddhist monks.

The ministers "expressed their revulsion to Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win over reports that the demonstrations in Myanmar are being suppressed by violent force and that there has been a number of fatalities," said the statement, issued after talks on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

The statement was striking because the group operates on a consensual basis and holds as a core principle "noninterference in the internal affairs of one another."

A U.N. spokeswoman had announced that Myanmar's junta agreed to receive a U.N. envoy to discuss the crisis in the southeast Asian country, ruled by the army since 1962. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sent Ibrahim Gambari, a Nigerian U.N. undersecretary-general, on a mission to the region. He was in Myanmar's neighbour Thailand awaiting a visa.

Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont told the U.N. General Assembly that Thailand was "gravely concerned." As a fellow Buddhist nation, Thailand "finds as unacceptable the commission of violence and bodily harm to Buddhist monks and other demonstrators in Yangon."

'TRAVESTY'