EU agrees to step up Myanmar sanctions

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union agreed on Friday to step up sanctions on Myanmar's military rulers for their treatment of opponents, including detained Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

"Europe agreed today to step up sanctions and take further targeted measures against the Burmese regime," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a news conference after a summit of the 27 EU member states in Brussels.

Calling Suu Kyi "perhaps now the most renowned prisoner of conscience in the world," he demanded an end to her "absurd and contemptible sham trial" and her immediate and unconditional release.

Brown read from a joint statement agreed by EU leaders saying that unless Suu Kyi and 2,000 other political prisoners were released, the credibility of elections due to be held in 2010 would be undermined.

"The EU will respond with additional targeted measures," Brown quoted the statement as saying. "That means we are prepared to look at further sanctions," he said.

Suu Kyi spent her 64th birthday in Yangon's Insein jail on Friday facing another five years in detention if found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing an American intruder, John Yettaw, to stay for two days after he swam to her Yangon home in early May.

The European Union extended visa bans and asset freezes on the Myanmar military government and its backers for another year in April. The sanctions were tightened after a crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks in September 2007.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom)