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picture since well before last month's mass protests against 45 years of military rule and had been effectively been replaced by Lieutenant-General Thein Sein,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