Myanmar gov't battles rebels near Chinese border

In this photo taken Jan. 10, 2011, Myanmar officials take part in Manaw festival (Kachin's traditional New Year) with Kachin ethnic tribe people in Kachin state, northern Myanmar. Government troops in Myanmar have attacked Kachin forces, one of the country's powerful northern militias, with artillery in a bid to force rebel fighters from a strategic region where China is constructing major hydropower plants.
BANGKOK (AP) — Government troops in Myanmar have attacked one of the country's powerful northern militias with artillery trying to force rebel fighters from a strategic region where China is building major hydropower plants.
The fighting has killed at least four people and forced 2,000 more to flee since it started Thursday, according to the U.S. Campaign for Burma.
The violence is some of the most serious in Myanmar since its military junta handed power in March to a civilian government critics say is simply a proxy for continued military rule. The new government has said it wants to improve ties with ethnic minorities that have waged rebellions along the border, but the latest fighting underscores the deep tension that remains.
The rebels involved in the most recent clashes belong to the Kachin, one of Myanmar's sizable ethnic minorities. Their decades of struggles for more autonomy have routinely been met by military suppression.
Kachin military commander Gwan Maw told U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia on Monday that the fighting in northern Myanmar's Momauk region, near the Chinese border, could spread and possibly escalate into civil war if the government refused to negotiate an end to it with the Kachin Independence Organization.
Though the fighting could worsen, it is unlikely to engulf the repressive nation.
The 8,000-strong Kachin militia reached a peace deal with the country's former ruling junta in 1994, but the truce broke down last year after the militia rejected a call by the government to become border guards under army leadership. The junta made the appeal ahead of last November's elections, Myanmar's first in 20 years, which introduced the nominally civilian government now in power.
The Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based lobbying group that uses Myanmar's former name in its title, said hundreds of Myanmar government troops deployed to the northern region to force out Kachin forces after they refused to abandon a strategic base. The base is located near a major hydropower project that being built by China's state-owned China Datang Corporation, the group said.
A three-hour gunbattle Thursday killed three soldiers and one rebel fighter, who was allegedly captured and beaten to death by government troops, the group said.
Skirmishes erupted again Saturday and lasted until at least Monday, with government forces shelling the area with artillery, Maw said. There were no immediate reports of fighting on Tuesday.