9 Nobel Peace Prize winners seek UN action to halt arms sales to Myanmar

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa: Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu led a call by nine peace prize recipients Tuesday for the United Nations Security Council to act to halt the sale of arms to the military regime of Myanmar.
The laureates, including the Dalai Lama and Elie Wiesel, also called for nations to implement arms embargoes to prevent Myanmar from getting weapons that are used against its citizens.
Most Western nations embargo arms sales to Myanmar due to its poor human rights record and the junta's failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government. Russia supplies Myanmar with arms, and Rosatom, the Russian federal atomic energy agency, signed a deal last May to build a nuclear research center there.
"We call upon the international community to actively work to implement arms embargoes against the regime," the laureates said in a statement.
"Further, we appeal to the members of the (United Nations) Security Council, and the international community, to take action quickly on measures that will prevent the sale of arms to the (Myanmar) military," and to impose banking sanctions on top Myanmar leaders and state and private entities that support the government's weapons trade, it said.
Many Western countries either ban or discourage investment in Myanmar as a way of pressuring the junta.
Myanmar's military government violently quashed peaceful protests in September. The U.N. estimates at least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained in the crackdown.
The Nobel laureates said harassment of activists continued and that the military junta was using a "flawed" process to draft a constitution.
The junta, which said Tuesday that the draft constitution was complete, has announced plans for a May referendum and elections in 2010 — the first time it has set dates to carry out what it calls its road map to democracy.
But critics have called the constitutional process undemocratic because it has been closely directed by the military with no input from independent parties.
"The election promised by the military regime is a complete sham," Tutu said.
The veteran anti-apartheid cleric and human rights activist said the Security Council needed to heed the precedent set when it imposed an arms embargo on apartheid South Africa after the Soweto student uprisings of 1976.
The group repeated its call for the release of fellow Nobel peace laureate and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in prison or under house arrest for more than 12 of the past 18 years.
The statement was issued by Tutu and signed by the exiled Tibetan Dalai Lama, Wiesel of the U.S., Iran's Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina, Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams of Northern Ireland, Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala and American anti-landmine activist Jody Williams.
associated press