Sunday February 10, 04:53 AM

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military government said on Saturday it
would hold a referendum on a new constitution in May followed by multi-
party elections in 2010, a move dismissed as worthless by the
opposition without the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

"We have achieved success in economic, social and other sectors and in
restoring peace and stability," the junta announced on state
television after sending in the army to quell Buddhist monk-led pro-
democracy demonstrations in September.

"So multi-party, democratic elections will be held in 2010," said the
statement issued in the name of Secretary Number One Lieutenant-
General Tin Aung Myint Oo, a top member of the junta.

The elections would be the first since 1990, when Suu Kyi's National
League for Democracy (NLD) won multi-party elections in the former
Burma .
The military, which has ruled the country since 1962, ignored the
result, crushing pro-democracy demonstrations at the cost of several
thousand lives.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has spent much of the time since
then in detention.

A spokesman for the Burmese government in exile, which includes MPs
elected in 1990 but who fled after the junta refused to let the
election result stand, said the announcement would mean nothing unless
Suu Kyi was released and took part.

"Without the participation of Suu Kyi, the NLD and ethnic parties the
people will not accept this constitution," said Zin Linn.

Saturday's announcement from the junta did not make clear whether the
NLD would be allowed to take part, but the constitution is believed
likely to disbar Suu Kyi from office by ruling out anyone married to a
foreigner, as she was, and to ensure the top leadership comes from the
military.

Suu Kyi's husband, British academic Michael Aris, died in March 1999.
"In accord with the fourth step of the seven-step roadmap to
democracy, a nationwide referendum will be held in May 2008 to ratify
the newly drafted constitution," the junta statement said.

The new constitution, now being drafted after the completion of a
national convention first convened in the 1990s, will be finished
soon, the statement added.

The NLD has refused to take part in the convention.

The government announced the seven-step roadmap in 2003 but had
refused to set a firm timetable until now. Some Western powers
dismissed the roadmap as little more than a sham to allow the junta to
retain power