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REUTERS
SINGAPORE
MYANMAR leader Aung San Suu Kyi accused the international community on Friday of stoking resentment between Buddhists and Muslims in the country's northwest, where an army crackdown has killed at least 86 people and sent 10,000 fleeing to Bangladesh.
Suu Kyi appealed for understanding of her nation's ethnic complexities, and said the world should not forget the military operation was launched in response to attacks on security forces that the government has blamed on Muslim insurgents.
"I would appreciate it so much if the international community would help us to maintain peace and stability, and to make progress in building better relations between the two communities, instead of always drumming up cause for bigger fires of resentment," Suu Kyi told Singapore state-owned broadcaster Channel News Asia during a visit to the city-state.
"It doesn't help if everybody is just concentrating on the negative side of the situation, in spite of the fact that there were attacks against police outposts."
The violence in the northwest poses the biggest challenge so far to Suu Kyi's eight-month-old government, and has renewed international criticism that the Nobel Peace Prize winner has done too little to help the country's Rohingya Muslim minority.
Soldiers have poured into the north of Rakhine State, close to the frontier with Bangladesh, after attacks on border posts on Oct. 9 that killed nine police officers. Humanitarian aid has been cut off to the area, which is closed to outside observers.
Myanmar's military and the government have rejected allegations by residents and human rights groups that soldiers have raped Rohingya women, burned houses and killed civilians during the operation.
Suu Kyi's remarks came as a commission led by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan arrived in the state, where ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims have lived separately since clashes in 2012 in which more than 100 people were killed.
