WASHINGTON (AFP) – Critics of Myanmar are voicing hope for intensified global pressure on the military regime after the United States signaled it would support a UN inquiry into alleged war crimes.

President Barack Obama’s administration last year opened a new policy of engagement with Myanmar, also known as Burma, concluding that longstanding Western efforts to isolate the junta had failed to bear fruit.

But the administration has voiced growing dismay over the junta, which has faced allegations it is pursuing nuclear weapons and has stepped up efforts to marginalize democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi ahead of rare elections.

An administration official said the United States has opened discussions on how to set up a war crimes probe, a longstanding demand by activists as it could lead to the eventual indictment of junta leaders.

“The United States supports establishing an international commission of inquiry to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma,” the official said.

While most global attention on Myanmar focuses on Aung San Suu Kyi, the world’s only detained Nobel Peace laureate, activists point out that millions more have suffered in the country’s ethnic conflicts.

“It is long overdue that the world acknowledges that the Burmese regime is guilty of heinous and brutal acts against its own people,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, who led calls in the US Congress for a war crimes probe.

“Burma’s military regime has destroyed or forced the abandonment of 3,500 villages, raped countless ethnic minority women and recruited thousands of child soldiers,” said Crowley, a member of Obama’s Democratic Party from New York.

Crowley called for more nations to back an inquiry, saying the Obama administration’s move “brings us one step closer to delivering the justice the Burmese people rightfully deserve, but the fight does not end here.”

The US Campaign for Burma, led by exiled activists, said that Australia, Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have also supported an inquiry.

It pledged to shift attention to persuading the European Union as a whole and Canada to offer support.

China, the main commercial and political partner of Myanmar, wields veto power on the UN Security Council, meaning that any effort to establish an inquiry would likely come instead at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Former US president George W. Bush’s administration, while determined to isolate Myanmar, would have been in an awkward position to press for a war crimes panel.

Under Bush, the United States shunned the Human Rights Council — considering it ineffectual and tainted by poor membership — and staunchly opposed the International Criminal Court.

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said that the Obama administration was committed to using a “range of tools” on Myanmar, including dialogue.

“Our strategy has always envisioned not only direct engagement, but also using tools like sanctions to put pressure on the Burmese government,” said Crowley, who is not related to the congressman.

The State Department spokesman said the United States hoped to press the junta to “open up political space in its society for broader participation, to have a credible dialogue with minority and ethnic groups (and) to improve its human rights record.”

The junta last week announced elections on November 7, but the United States has voiced doubt that the vote would be “inclusive or credible.”

Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won the last election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power. It is boycotting the upcoming vote, viewing it as a sham to cement the junta’s power. — AFP

MAE RAMA LUANG CAMP, Thailand – The weary, weather-beaten refugee, gently cradling his sleeping son, gazes at the ceiling, bites his lips, but can’t hold back the tears.

“I cry for those who were killed and died of disease or went mad, for the children who suffered,” says Pawo Tu. “I cry for the food I had to beg for but could not repay.”

This 46-year-old orchard keeper is just one among half a million Karen tribespeople driven from their homes by the Myanmar military, and his story is typical of the sagas of suffering that emerge in this refugee camp on the Thailand-Myanmar border.

Aid workers call the regime’s campaign against the Karen rebellion “the hidden Darfur.” To Christians who work with refugees from the country they still call Burma, it’s “the Calvary of the Karen.”

The world’s attention to Myanmar has focused largely on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her struggle with the junta that has held her under house arrest for 18 years in Yangon, formerly Rangoon.

Mentioned mostly parenthetically is the relentless war to eradicate a 60-year-old insurgency among the Karen, the country’s second largest ethnic minority, by cutting it off from the general population. Although the regime denies it, the U.N. and international human rights groups have documented executions, gang rape, torture, forced labor and mass relocations of civilians after their communities are torched.

Pawo Tu’s family fled when troops burned their village, Leka Deta, in 2006, suspecting it sided with the rebels who are fighting for an independent state.

“For five years we lived in the jungle in makeshift shelters of bamboo and banana leaves, always on the run, always afraid the soldiers would find us,” he said. Like most of the uprooted Karen, the family foraged, hunted, traded, tended small vegetable plots and sometimes begged from villagers. In their jungle hideouts, Pawo Tu’s wife bore five children.

With the food run out and the soldiers getting too close, the family risked land mines, cripplers and killers of countless escapees, to reach the Thai-Myanmar border. Here, some 150,000 Karen and other ethnic minorities live in nine camps.

“Once there were 100 families in our village, now only some ten are left,” says a recent arrival, Khwe Say Hto. “We became slaves of the military.”

Families are financially ruined, many refugees say, because the military demands “taxes” — sometimes nearly half a villager’s already minuscule income — for avoiding the draft or forced labor, or for no reason at all.

Farmers are kept from their fields doing long stretches of unpaid labor, hauling supplies, building military bases and repairing roads. Khwe Say Hto says that in his village of Palodu, men and sometimes women also served as human minesweepers. Two were killed and others wounded in the most recent incident, a few months back.

The 38-year-old farmer said he was shanghaied as a porter 10 times and on his last, grueling march three of his fellow villagers sank to the ground in exhaustion. The soldiers kicked them and then ground their boots on their throats until they died, he said.

“We could stand it no longer,” he said, so he fled with his wife and four children.

At another camp, Mae La, set up 21 years ago, so many refugees have poured in that it has become a virtual city of bamboo shacks, primitive schools and churches. It sits at the foot of soaring limestone cliffs in a remote jungle valley inaccessible by road during the monsoon rains.

In an open-sided hall, more than 200 teenagers gather to hear Rev. Simon Htoo talk about helping camp-born youngsters fight depression, drugs and AIDS.

“When we were in Burma, we were like wild cats, wild cats that were hunted, always fleeing the Burmese military,” reads a poem by one refugee, Toe Kro. “Living in the camp, we are like a wild cat that is being raised in domesticity, cannot go out of the cage.”

A sudden downpour erupts as the Protestant pastor leads the group in a song:

“We call our land Kawthoolei, the Land without Evil, a green and beautiful land,” the clear voices soar above the rain’s heavy patter.

“But today this land is rife with killing, fighting, land mines, and filled with evil. Widows, orphans are crying without help…We want peace. We want to go home.”

Some never will.

On a map of the U.S. in the camp, red dots from Seattle to Boston pinpoint the Karen diaspora. Since 2006, 60,000 Karen, who include Christians, Buddhists and animists, as well as other ethnic minorities, have left the camps, three-quarters of them bound for the U.S.

Hsa Gay, the camp’s deputy chief, says he is happy for those who find happiness abroad, away from the disease that afflicts up to 40 percent of camp-dwellers with bouts of malaria and 10 percent with tuberculosis at any given time. The refugees live mostly on rice and beans.

But Hsa Gay says resettlement has its downside, because those selected are usually the ones the tribe needs most — teachers, nurses, technicians.

Betrayed and forgotten: That’s how David Tharckabaw sees his people.

The vice president of the Karen National Union, the insurgency’s political arm, says that Britain, the colonial ruler until 1949, broke its promise to give the Karen a separate state. Today, the plight of the Karen, who number about 4 million in a population of 43 million, has become a sideshow.

“Most countries give lip service but it is economic interests which are driving them. They see Burma as a market, a place with natural resources,” he said.

The U.S. and European Union apply economic sanctions, but China, Thailand and other neighbors trade with Myanmar, while the U.S., Tharckabaw says, is “hooked” on engagement as a way of coaxing the 38-year-old junta toward democracy.

The Karen insurgency, dating back to 1949, is considered the world’s oldest, and the adage that “old soldiers never die” seems true enough in the figure of Lt. Col. Saw Doo, at 82 possibly the world’s oldest recruit still on active duty in an army with no pensions or retirement age.

The farmer’s son joined the insurgency when it broke out, spent decades on the front lines, was wounded and never managed to return to his parents and native village.

Striding as erect as a young officer reviewing troops, Saw Doo still serves “the Karen revolution” as head of training for the Karen National Liberation Army, the military arm of the KNU.

Armed only with basic infantry weapons, the Karen have lost ground to the Chinese-supplied Myanmar military, which has moved at least 200,000 troops into Karen State. But still they hope their guerrilla skills, or the junta’s internal conflicts, or a general pro-democracy uprising, will turn the tide.

“There is only one way we can lose — if we surrender all our weapons to the enemy,” says the old warrior, one of 16 who joined the rebellion at the start.

Even older is 91-year-old Saw Tamla Baw, the KNU president.

Gravely ill from a lung infection, barely able to lift his head from a pillow, he lies on a mattress in a small, sweltering room with bare cement walls. A grandson fans his face with a scrap of yellow plastic.

“It will be difficult,” he says, struggling with every word. “But we can regain our country. I believe one day we will have our own Karen state.” — AP

The 38-year-old female elephant was recently captured in the jungles of northwestern Myanmar and transported Monday by boat and truck to Naypyitaw, where it was given the name Bhaddavati, or “One Who is Endowed With Goodness,” in a formal naming ceremony, the Myanmar Ahlin newspaper reported.

Top military leaders greeted the 7-foot, 4-inch (2.2-meter) elephant when it arrived in Naypyitaw and sprinkled the beast with scented water during a ceremony at the Uppatasanti Pagoda, a replica of the famed Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the former capital and biggest city in Myanmar.

The white elephant marched in a parade of other elephants and circled the pagoda, where religious sermons were delivered for its safety and well-being, the newspaper said. The white elephant will be housed in an enclosure at the foot of the temple.

White elephants, actually albinos, have for centuries been revered in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and other Asian nations. They were normally kept and pampered by monarchs and considered a symbol of royal power and prosperity.

The elephants are not necessarily white. They can look similar to other elephants except for certain features such as fair eyelashes and toenails, light-colored hair or a reddish hue to the skin.

Bhaddavati is the fourth white elephant captured and held in captivity in Myanmar in recent years. The other three are kept at a special park in Yangon, where they live in an enclosure with spiraled pavilions, a manmade waterfall, ponds and trees. — AP

Officials and diplomats confirmed the arrival of Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun, who is on a four-nation tour and making his first visit to Myanmar since the two countries resumed diplomatic ties in 2007. The sources spoke anonymously because the visit has not been officially announced by the military-ruled government.

Few details are known about Pak’s four-day visit. He was scheduled to tour Yangon’s famed Shwedagon Pagoda before traveling Friday to the administrative capital of Naypyitaw to meet his counterpart, Nyan Win, and other senior government officials, the officials and diplomats said. The subject of talks has not been disclosed.

Myanmar and North Korea are two of Asia’s most authoritarian regimes, and both face sanctions by the West. They have had increasingly close ties in recent years, especially in military affairs, and there are fears that Pyongyang is supplying the army-led Southeast Asian regime with nuclear technology.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed concern at a security meeting last week with senior Asian officials about reports that North Korea had delivered military equipment to Myanmar, also known as Burma.

“We continue to be concerned by the reports that Burma may be seeking assistance from North Korea with regard to a nuclear program,” Clinton said. “We will be discussing further ways in which we can cooperate to alter the actions of the government in Burma and encourage the leaders there to commit to reform and change and the betterment of their own people.”

On his regional tour, Pak also visited Vietnam and Laos and was headed next to Indonesia, diplomats said.

Myanmar severed diplomatic relations with North Korea in 1983, following a fatal bombing attack during a visit by South Korea’s then-President Chun Doo-hwan that killed 21 people, including four South Korean Cabinet ministers.

Three North Korean commandos involved in the bombing were detained — one blew himself up during his arrest, a second was hanged and a third died in prison in 2008. — AP

India’s relationship with Myanmar, considered a pariah in some quarters, has taken on new importance because of concerns over insurgencies and drug trafficking along their shared border. It is also competing with China for access to the country’s large natural gas resources.

Myanmar junta chief Than Shwe was to meet India’s senior leaders Tuesday and is expected to sign a series of cooperation agreements on the smuggling of arms, drugs and ammunition across their 1,025-mile (1,650-kilometer) frontier.

“There are insurgencies on both sides (of the border) and both countries need each other,” said G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian ambassador to Myanmar.

India has also grown wary of China’s influence in Myanmar, and is in competition with its regional rival for access to the country’s large natural gas resources.

India, a major importer of fuel, has ignored the junta’s attempts to snuff out democracy in the reclusive Southeast Asian nation.

New Delhi, which has established deep economic and military ties with Myanmar’s generals over the past decade, has said it believed talking quietly is a better approach than sanctions.

“India has long supported the democratic movement in Myanmar. At the same time, however, it has made clear that isolation is not an option with any neighbor,” the Indian Express newspaper said in an editorial.

Than Shwe’s visit has been marked by criticism and protest from pro-democracy activists.

After many years of supporting the democratic movement in Myanmar led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, India switched tracks and reached out to the military regime.

New Delhi has begun work on an ambitious transport corridor across Myanmar that would give India’s remote landlocked northeastern states access to the Bay of Bengal through the Myanmar port city of Sittwe. India has also agreed to help restore the renowned Ananda Temple, a noted Buddhist shrine and major tourist attraction, in Myanmar’s central Bagan district.

Last week, the U.S. State Department said it hoped India would press Myanmar over democratic reform, engaging the opposition and other ethnic groups in the country. — AP

In Vietnam for regional security talks with senior officials from around Southeast Asia, Clinton said the U.S. was concerned about reports that North Korea has delivered military equipment to Myanmar, also known as Burma.

“We continue to be concerned by the reports that Burma may be seeking assistance from North Korea with regard to a nuclear program,” she added. “We will be discussing further ways in which we can cooperate to alter the actions of the government in Burma and encourage the leaders there to commit to reform and change and the betterment of their own people.”

Clinton also said she shared concerns about upcoming elections in Myanmar, which U.S. officials say hold no hope of being free and fair. Myanmar has said it will hold elections this year but has not given a date, and it appears unlikely that opposition figures will be able to participate.

Myanmar’s problems, Clinton said, have an impact “not only on the people of that country but on their neighbors, as the outflow of refugees continues,” contributing to regional instability. — AP

Forestry officials found the animal Saturday, acting on a tip, in the jungles of Maungdaw township in northwestern Rakhine state, the New Light of Myanmar reported, describing the elephant as about 38 years old and 7 feet and 4 inches (2.2 meters) tall.

White elephants, actually albinos, have for centuries been revered in Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and other Asian nations. They were normally kept and pampered by monarchs and considered a symbol of royal power and prosperity.

The elephants are not necessarily white. They can look similar to other elephants except for certain features like fair eyelashes and toenails, light-colored hair or a reddish hue to the skin.

The newspaper did not say where the elephant would be housed. It will be the fourth white elephant held in captivity in Myanmar. The three others are at the Mindhamma Hill park, in suburban Yangon, where they live in an enclosure with spiraled pavilions, a manmade waterfall, ponds, trees and vegetation.

Soraida Salwala, of the Thailand-based Friends of the Asian Elephant Foundation, said the group normally objects to placing elephants in captivity but stopped short of criticizing the capture of white elephants. In Thailand, all white elephants are traditionally handed over to the country’s revered king.

“The white elephant is a sign of great blessings and fortune for the land,” she said, adding that traditional Myanmar and Thai beliefs are similar on the subject.

Previous white elephants transported from the jungles have been heralded in lavish ceremonies where the Myanmar’s military leaders sprinkle them with scented water laced with gold, silver and precious gems.

A war was fought in the 16th century between Thailand and Myanmar, then Siam and Burma respectively, over disputed ownership of four white elephants. — AP

President Barack Obama and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanded Suu Kyi’s release in statements echoed at rallies and prayer vigils. Supporters threw a birthday party at the suburban Yangon home of a fellow opposition member. It was attended by more than 300 people but not the guest of honor.

Holding candles and yellow roses, they lit a birthday cake with 65 candles and released 65 doves into the sky while chanting, “Long Live Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.” Plainclothes security watched and videotaped the event.

Suu Kyi has now spent 15 birthdays in detention over the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest. She is the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace laureate.

“It is very sad that she cannot celebrate her birthday in freedom,” said her lawyer Nyan Win.

Confined to her home, Suu Kyi planned to celebrate by providing a lunch of chicken curry and an Indian-style flat bread for the three dozen construction workers helping to renovate her crumbling two-story mansion, Nyan Win said.

The tight security surrounding Suu Kyi’s home allowed the delivery of a birthday cake and a bouquet of roses, orchids and lilies sent by political supporters. Members of her National League for Democracy party are planting 20,000 trees around the country, mostly on the grounds of Buddhist monasteries, to mark the occasion.

A confidante, Win Tin, made an impassioned plea for Suu Kyi’s release.

“To the international community I want to reiterate her words: ‘Please use your liberty to promote ours,’” said Win Tin, who co-founded the party with Suu Kyi and himself spent nearly 20 years jailed as a political prisoner.

Global condemnation over her imprisonment has failed to change the junta’s harsh attacks on all dissent or soften their stance on Suu Kyi, whose steely grace, charisma and popularity have remained in tact despite her long confinement.

Ahead of historic elections planned for later this year, Suu Kyi remains the biggest threat to the ruling junta. Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been dominated by military rule since 1962.

The vote will be the first in two decades. Suu Kyi’s party overwhelmingly won the last election in 1990, but was never allowed to take power.

Obama praised Suu Kyi’s “determination, courage and personal sacrifice in working for human rights and democratic change in Burma inspire all of us who stand for freedom and justice.”

“I once again call on the Burmese government to release Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners,” Obama said in a statement.

The U.N. chief said he remains “deeply concerned” that Suu Kyi is still under house arrest.

“I have been persistently, consistently demanding that all the political prisoners including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi should be released without condition as soon as possible so that they would be able to participate in the political process,” Ban said. Daw is a term of respect in Myanmar.

In Britain, where concern for the jailed democracy leader runs high, Prime Minister David Cameron wrote Suu Kyi an open letter telling her that he had “long found your example deeply inspiring.”

“The injustice of your continuing detention mirrors the injustice that the regime has inflicted on your country and your people for so many years,” Cameron wrote.

Britain’s Foreign Office encouraged people from around the world to post birthday greetings on Facebook that British diplomats have pledged to pass on to Suu Kyi’s representatives.

Under new election laws, Suu Kyi and other political prisoners — estimated at more than 2,000 — are effectively barred from taking part in the polls. The NLD has called the laws unfair and undemocratic and is boycotting the vote, which critics have dismissed as a sham designed to cement military rule. The party was disbanded after refusing to register for the elections by a May 6 deadline.

Suu Kyi’s detention was extended by 18 months in August 2009 when she was convicted of violating the terms of her house arrest by briefly harboring an American intruder. The sentence will keep her locked away during the elections.

Activists and politicians have rallied from Sydney to Brussels to wish the opposition leader a happy birthday and demand her release. More candlelight vigils, concerts and Buddhist prayer ceremonies were planned later Saturday in European and American cities. — AP

In Rakhine state, the torrential rains triggered floods and mudslides that washed away homes, damaged schools and bridges and caused 63 deaths, according to Monday’s official count.

The death toll could rise because villagers were returning to homes on steep hills that still are vulnerable to landslides, said a U.N. official, who declined to be named since he was not authorized to speak with the media.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said local military commanders in the junta-ruled nation and authorities aided victims and inspected repair and recovery efforts in the state’s seriously hit Buthidaung and Maungdaw regions.

The government, United Nations and other humanitarian organizations have provided clothing, medicine, household utensils, food and cash for the victims, state media and a U.N. press release said.

Many of the flood victims were housed at schools and temporary shelters since the rains began June 13 and did not end until midweek.

The U.N. said up to 15,000 families were affected, while state media said only more than 2,000 people suffered from the flooding.

Flooding is common in Asia during the monsoon season that typically starts in late May.

Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar in May 2008, leaving more than 140,000 people dead or missing. — AP

Bridges, homes and other buildings were damaged after record rainfall of more than 13 inches (33 centimetres) Wednesday in parts of Rakhine State, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.

The landslides swept away huts on hillsides. Some areas have seen floods as high as two feet (60 centimetres) after several days of torrential rain, the report said.

Landslides caused by heavy rains are not uncommon in Myanmar owing to deforestation.

Across the border in southeastern Bangladesh, at least 55 people have been killed and thousands more left homeless after the heaviest rain in decades triggered flash floods and landslides, according to police there.

The hardest-hit area, Teknaf, is home to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. — AFP