Suu Kyi urged to help to end Kachin war

Mediators trying to broker a peace deal between the military and ethnic minority rebels in northern Myanmar yesterday appealed to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to help end the bloody conflict.
The military's use of air strikes against the rebels has stoked international concerns about a civil war that has overshadowed widely praised political reforms seen since the end of junta rule in 2011.
"Aung San Suu Kyi also has responsibility to implement ethnic peace," Yup Zaw Hkaung, a local businessman and peace negotiator in the Kachin state capital Myitkyina, told AFP by telephone.
"When she came to Kachin State to campaign for votes, she talked about peace. She cannot abandon Kachin," he said, adding that neither the opposition leader nor President Thein Sein had replied to letters asking for help.
Civil war has plagued parts of the country formerly known as Burma since it won independence from Britain in 1948.
Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner turned lawmaker, used her maiden speech to parliament in July last year to call for greater protection of ethnic minority rights.
But the veteran activist has disappointed rights campaigners by not speaking out more vocally in support of another minority group, the Rohingya, in the violence-torn western state of Rakhine.