Myanmar's late PM linked to Suu Kyi attack

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Myanmar Prime Minister Soe Win, who was to be buried at a state funeral on Sunday, was a trusted aide of junta strongman Than Shwe and came to prominence in a bloody crackdown on a nationwide uprising in 1988.

He was also the presumed architect of a bloody attack on supporters of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2003 that led to the Nobel laureate's latest long stretch in detention.

Soe Win, 59, had treatment at a top Singapore hospital in March. Embassy officials said then he was "ill but not critically ill" and denied reports he had leukemia, although that was believed to be the cause of death.

He had been out of the political picture since well before last month's mass protests against 45 years of military rule and had been effectively been replaced by Lieutenant-General Thein Sein.

Soe Win first shot to prominence in 1988 for helping crush a nationwide democracy uprising in the former Burma in which an estimated 3,000 people were killed.

He remained a hardliner and his replacement of the purged Khin Nyunt in 2004 dashed faint hopes of political reform.

The United States said Soe Win was believed to have been directly involved in the attack a year earlier by "government-affiliated thugs" on Suu Kyi and her convoy near the central city of Mandalay in a region under Soe Win's control.

Exiled dissidents say dozens were killed by youths wielding bamboo and iron rods. The junta says four people died.

Suu Kyi was imprisoned after the incident and remains under house arrest.

Despite being the fourth most powerful man in a domestically and internationally reviled military junta, foreign dignitaries who met him described him as affable and urbane.

After his appointment, then Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said he was confident Soe Win would carry on with a seven-step "roadmap to democracy" that the junta's opponents and Western governments have denounced as a sham.

"He's quite a nice guy, friendly. We have known each other for quite some time. He is not a typical stern, army type of guy. He is not authoritarian. He has an international view," Surakiart told Thai radio.

Nearly three years after those comments the roadmap remains stuck at "stage one" -- drawing up a new constitution -- and Suu Kyi is still under house arrest with her telephone cut off and all visitors forbidden.

Soe Win showed no desire to negotiate with her National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a massive election landslide in 1990 only to be denied power by the military.

The Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine, which specializes in Myanmar, quoted him as once saying the army "will not talk to the NLD".

Besides the 2003 attack on Suu Kyi's convoy, Soe Win commanded an infantry division in Yangon that crushed massive anti-army protests in 1988, according to Irrawaddy.