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The military regime told a 'baseless and mean lie' in claiming that one of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's deputies had resigned over her 'dictatorial' attitude, one of her top aides said last night.

 Tin Oo, the deputy chairman of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), made the comments after the State Peace and Development Council, as the junta now styles itself, issued a statement saying 77-year-old Kyi Maung had withdrawn from the party.

 It claimed he had rejected Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's 'confrontational stance', insults to party elders and unseemly association with youth members of the party.

 But Mr Tin Oo said that the NLD's executive committee had merely asked Mr Kyi Maung to lighten his work load because he appeared recently to be 'tiring very easily'.

 Another NLD member said Mr Kyi Maung had collapsed 10 days ago.

 Rangoon-based envoys said the junta's statement had all the makings of a classic piece of propaganda.

 But they said the claims were a reminder of the extraordinary pressures the often isolated opposition was under.

 Ms Aung San Suu Kyi has tried to stimulate her party machine in recent weeks by holding party meetings on the outskirts of the capital.

 But after one successful meeting, the regime stymied further attempts to hold meetings in party offices with barricades and massed police.

 This is part of a strategy designed to grind down the NLD leadership's will to fight without allowing the outside world to claim that Ms Aung San Suu Kyi is back under house arrest.

 That the intelligence organisation, under Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, has organised this harassment merely showed how little room the opposition had to work in, diplomats said.

 Even Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's charisma and moral strength finds itself frozen by the regime's intolerance for mild dissent. This puts terrific strains on many of her loyal supporters.

 Ms Aung San Suu Kyi said a few months ago that 'some people say I should be more aggressive with the regime, others say I should be softer. Perhaps that means I have got it about right.'  Mr Kyi Maung ran the party in the run-up to the 1990 election after Ms Aung San Suu Kyi was confined under what turned out to be six years of house arrest.

 Like fellow deputy chairman Mr Tin Oo, he was forced out of the army by disagreements over the uncompromising policies of former dictator Ne Win.



Regime accused of cheap propaganda to undermine dissident