YANGON, Myanmar
Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will help investigate charges of election fraud if and when she is released from house arrest on Saturday.
Nyan Win, a spokesman for her now-disbanded National League for Democracy party, said Wednesday the group has established a committee to investigate charges of fraud in last Sunday's election, the country's first in two decades.
The ruling military's proxy party has said it won a sweeping victory, but critics accuse it of widespread vote-rigging.
An official who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the press, said although no official instructions have been made about her possible release, "necessary security preparations are being made on the ground."
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Myanmar's military-backed party has so far captured 77 percent of the parliamentary seats contested in weekend elections, a senior party leader said Wednesday, following polling widely decried as manipulated and unfair.
The results point to an overwhelming victory. But there has never been much doubt about the outcome because the junta proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party fielded candidates in nearly every district, whereas the largest opposition party was able to contest only 164 of the 1,159 parliamentary seats in Sunday's elections.
The government says the elections, the country's first in two decades, are a major step toward democracy, but critics including President Barack Obama have said they were neither free nor fair.
The polling also has sparked violence and some fears of an outright civil war among Myanmar's ethnic minorities, who make up about 40 percent of the population. Some have been fighting the central government since Myanmar gained independence from Britain in 1948.
Clashes starting Sunday between ethnic rebels and government troops have killed at least three people -- according to state media -- and prompted an exodus of about 20,000 refugees across the border into Thailand. Many of them headed home Tuesday after the fighting subsided at the Thai-Myanmar border town of Myawaddy.
But about 1,000 refugees still remained on Thai soil opposite the Three Pagoda Pass, another site of clashes in recent days.
The governor of Thailand's Kanchanaburi province, Nataphon Wichienprerd, said the refugees feared renewed clashes in the Three Pagoda Pass area.
No official results of Sunday's elections have been announced. But a leader of the military-backed USDP said the party has won 878 seats contested in the two-chamber Parliament and 14 regional parliaments. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said ballot tallies were coming in slowly.
Political opponents say a sweeping victory for the junta's proxies will be engineered through cheating, and are joined by Western nations in slamming Myanmar's first elections in 20 years.
The official, speaking at the party's headquarters, said that so far 80 percent of the candidates fielded by the USDP had won their contests and 77 percent of seats in the two-house Parliament were in its hands.
Even the country's second biggest party, the National Unity Party -- an outgrowth of the political machine of the late strongman Gen. Ne Win -- has joined the chorus of critics, though it is generally seen as closer to the junta than to the country's pro-democracy movement.
"The election process is absolutely unfair," said 82-year-old retired Brigadier Aye San, a senior NUP official who claimed there had been many cases of fraud and impropriety.
The NUP ran 995 candidates, giving it hope it could pick up supporters in constituencies where it was the only alternative to the junta-backed party.
The largest anti-government party, the National Democratic Force, contested just 164 spots.
Although the ruling junta is widely detested, election rules were stacked in favor of its proxy party and strong-arm tactics were allegedly used on opponent candidates.
The military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, continues to hold some 2,200 political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Sunday's elections were the first in Myanmar, also known as Burma, since a 1990 vote won by Suu Kyi's party, which was barred from taking power and boycotted the new polls.
Suu Kyi's term of house arrest is supposed to expire Saturday, though the junta has not said whether it will give her freedom.
In the first official mention in Myanmar of the border-area fighting, state television Tuesday night said the clashes were with the Karen National Union, an ethnic rebel group that has fought against the government for decades.
It said three people were killed and 20 injured in Myawaddy. Five others -- including three soldiers and a policeman -- were killed at Three Pagoda Pass. Five people inside Thailand were also wounded Monday by stray gunfire, it said.
Several ethnic groups that field potent guerrilla armies refused to take part in the elections. Human rights groups have warned of possible civil war as ethnic groups are pressured by the government to accept a new constitution that offers them little autonomy.
"If the dictatorship goes ahead with plans to attack all armed groups refusing to surrender, today's fighting will be the equivalent of a first small skirmish," the group Burma Campaign UK said in a statement Monday.
The U.N. and human rights groups have detailed killings, rape, torture, forced labor and burning of villages in Myanmar as the regime campaigns to deny the rebels support from the civilian population. Thailand already shelters a quarter-million ethnic minority refugees from brutal campaigns by the Myanmar army.
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Associated Press photographer Apichart Weerawong in Mae Sot, Thailand, and writer Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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Online:
http://www.burmaelectiontracker.org
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