NOBEL WINNERS URGE RELEASE OF DISSIDENT

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993                   TAG: 9302180056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BANGKOK, THAILAND                                LENGTH: Short
NOBEL WINNERS URGE RELEASE OF DISSIDENT
The leader of a group of eight Nobel Peace Prize winners urged the international community Wednesday to join in demanding the release of Burma's main opposition leader.
The Nobel laureates came to Thailand - they were denied entry to neighboring Burma - to focus world attention on Burma's rights violations and call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and 1,500 other political prisoners. Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
"We invite the citizens of the world to join with us in demanding the end to oppression in Burma and the release of the woman who has become the symbol of liberty throughout the world," said Oscar Arias Sanchez, the former president of Costa Rica and the 1987 Nobel peace laureate.
He and Tibet's Dalai Lama, the 1989 peace prize winner, called for an arms embargo.
The laureates also met Wednesday with exiled Burmese students.
Arias said he helped initiate the mission because "Western democracies are not really committed to the fight for democracy in the Third World."
Suu Kyi has been under house arrest in Rangoon for 3 1/2 years. She led nonviolent resistance to Burma's military junta, which seized power in 1988. Her National League for Democracy party won the 1990 elections but the junta refused to let it govern.
Last month, the junta said her detention would be indefinite.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB