Myanmar rebel leader dies after long illness

MAE SOT, Thailand (Reuters) - A veteran leader of the Karen rebel movement in Myanmar, fighting one of the world's longest-running insurgencies, has died aged 79, a rebel official said on Sunday.

General Bo Mya, whose Karen National Union (KNU) has waged guerrilla war against the central government since 1949, died late on Saturday in a Thai hospital near the border of eastern Myanmar, a senior KNU official told Reuters.

"He passed away after suffering from several diseases so severe that he could not walk for three years," said the official, who declined to be named.

Bo Mya suffered from diabetes and heart disease.

The KNU official said the leader's death would have no impact on its fight for autonomy for the Karen people in eastern Myanmar, the official said.

"KNU objectives are the same. Nothing changes," he said.

The KNU and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), have been fighting the central government in Yangon for greater autonomy since 1949.

After seizing power in 1988 from another set of generals, Myanmar's current military rulers signed ceasefires or peace pacts with around two dozen ethnic guerrilla groups in the country's jungle hinterlands.

The KNU reached an informal ceasefire with the junta in December 2003 after talks brokered by then military intelligence chief Khin Nyunt, with whom Bo Mya once said he had a good rapport.

But a formal peace deal was never signed after Khin Nyunt was ousted in October 2004 and fighting resumed.