Australia has rejected Myanmar's nominee for ambassador in a major diplomatic snub to the military government.

 

Australia's foreign minister said on Tuesday that he was taking the unusual step of refusing to accept another country's choice as its senior diplomat because the nominee is a general in the country's "brutal" military government.

"Burma has a very brutal military regime and I refused to accept a general from that regime," Alexander Downer said.

 

Burma was renamed Myanmar by the country's military rulers in 1989.

 

Downer did not identify the nominee for ambassador, but The Australian newspaper named him as Brigadier-General Thura U Thet Oo Maung, who had served in Myanmar's Shan and Karen states, where rebels have been fighting the government.

 

Downer said he had made the decision to reject the nominee "a couple of months ago", but that the crackdown on anti-government protesters in recent weeks confirmed the military rulers' brutality.

 

He said the Australian government believed at least 30 people had been killed in the crackdown - not the 10 that Myanmar state media says - and about 1,400 arrested.