From Newsweek :

A Shot in the Arm

Burma’s rebel fighters were conspicuously absent when monks and ordinary citizens took to the streets of Rangoon. But guerrilla leaders say the mass protests have helped unite their divided groups.

AP After the Crackdown: Soldiers have reopened the streets leading to two of Rangoon’s main pagodas By Lennox Samuels Newsweek Updated: 5:05 p.m. ET Oct. 1, 2007 Oct. 1, 2007 - The men in the room look like a random gathering of office workers, managers and schoolteachers rather than people plotting to unseat a widely despised, illegitimate government. But they are here on extremely serious business: to put aside differences and find a way to rid Burma of its brutal military regime. The group met close to the Burmese border today as the military junta continued to stall on meeting international demands for an end to the crackdown on prodemocracy protests. Dissident groups say that up to 200 demonstrators were killed and thousands were detained when troops and police shot into crowds of unarmed protesters last week; the regime puts the death toll at 10. Based on the deference shown him, Chao Yodsuek, a bespectacled ringer for a bank clerk, clearly is the ranking person at the meeting, and he leads the discussion, speaking in the Shan dialect used by people just across the border from Thailand. Yodsuek is a colonel in the Shan State Army and a top official in an umbrella group, the Restoration Council of the Shan State (RCSS). The Shan are a Tai ethnic group who live primarily in the state named after them. At a break in the talks an assistant distributes a statement from the RCSS, but it contains only seven rather predictable points surrounding the council’s support for “the people and monks of Burma.” Far more significant is the agenda the colonel lays out for ending his country’s four-decade nightmare of oppression and privation, including an imminent return to violence if attempts at “national reconciliation” fail. “A political solution is the first priority,” says Yodsuek, a subdued but forceful figure in white dress shirt and dark trousers. “We’ll try to solve a political issue through political means. If that fails—armed struggle.” [...] continue reading