Refugees heading home to Burma after election tension explodes into fighting

The exodus underlined Burma's vulnerability to unrest following the country's first election in 20 years on Sunday, which was billed by the ruling military junta as a key stage in its self-proclaimed road to democracy.

Privately, officials of the junta's proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, have boasted of winning up to 80 per cent of the vote, even though just a handful of official results has been announced.

Political opponents said the sweeping victory would be won through cheating, and were joined by Western nations in decrying the vote as manipulated and unfair.

Thai authorities said that Burma assured them the situation had stabilised in Myawaddy, a border town where ethnic Karen guerrillas attacked on Sunday. The refugees who fled to nearby Mae Sot, in Thailand's Tak province, were all expected to be sent home by today. .

However, fighting continued at Three Pagoda Pass, another Burma border town 100 miles south of Myawaddy.

In the first official mention of the incidents, Burma state TV said yesterday the attackers were with the Karen National Union, an ethnic rebel group fighting against the government for decades.

Burma has been ruled by the military almost continuously since 1962, and rebellions by its ethnic minorities predate its independence from Britain in 1948. Ethnic guerrilla armies loathe the prospect of further tightening of control by the army.

Anti-government parties claim that the polls were blatantly rigged.

The country's second biggest party, the National Unity Party – an outgrowth of the political machine of the late strongman General Ne Win – joined the chorus of critics, even though it is generally seen as closer to the junta than to the country's pro-democracy movement.