'Myanmar to uphold democracy road map'

Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win told a briefing with the world's media here for a Southeast Asian leaders' summit that last month's dismissal of premier Khin Nyunt would not affect the regime's reform plans.

The former premier had outlined the "road map" in August 2003 in response to international condemnation of the detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the lack of democratic reforms in the isolated regime.

It had been feared that his dismissal and replacement by military hardliner Soe Win would disrupt the plan, which is supposed to end with multi-party elections but has been dismissed as a sham by the United States and Europe.

But Nyan Win stressed the leadership change would not affect the country's foreign and domestic policy.

"The answer is clear, there will be no changes," he said. "Our objectives and priorities will remain the same as before."

"Individuals may come and go, but national policies will remain the same. The changes in the cabinet are but normal and mean that the torch has been passed on to a new generation," he said.

"We will continue to work ceaselessly to ensure the success of the seven-step road map," he said.

Noting that Khin Nyunt had been credited with the reform plan, he said the commitment to move towards democracy was a "collective decision" by the ruling junta.

Concern about the slow pace of reform in Myanmar was expected to be a key topic for leaders at the 10-nation Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit starting Monday although there was little prospect of public censure because of the body's policy of non-interference in the affairs of member nations.

Asean leaders will be joined at the summit by Australia, China, India, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand.

Myanmar's Prime Minister Soe Win arrives in Laos today and is expected to brief his fellow leaders on developments, including the junta's decision to release 9,000 prisoners, among them political detainees.

The 9,248 Myanmar jail inmates promised freedom under the military regime's mass release programme was set to be out by last night but with only 40 political dissidents among them, according to the opposition and a senior prison official.

"Everybody that we said would be released will be released tonight," Zaw Win, prison department director-general, told reporters at the gates of Insein jail on the outskirts of Yangon.

"We have already released the first batch of 3,937."

He said inmates were being released from 41 prisons nationwide although reporters at Insein, the country's biggest jail, saw only about 1,000 released there on Friday.

The regime said through state media Thursday it would free 5,311 prisoners on top of the 3,937 planned releases announced a week earlier, taking the total to 9,248.