By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, June 29 (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Friday accused Myanmar's ruling junta of committing serious abuses against detainees and civilians, in a rare public censure from the humanitarian agency.

The Swiss-based ICRC, which normally deals with governments under a cloak of confidentiality, said thousands of prisoners in former Burma wee being forced to work as porters for the military, often in degrading and dangerous conditions.

People living near Myanmar's border with Thailand have also been subjected to systematic human rights violations, the ICRC said, citing witness reports of soldiers destroying villages' food stocks, forcing people from their homes, making arbitrary arrests and committing violence including murder.

Officials in Yangon "have consistently refused to enter into a serious discussion of these abuses with a view to putting a stop to them", ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said.

"The continuing deadlock with the authorities has led the ICRC to take the exceptional step of making its concerns public," Kellenberger said.

The ICRC, mandated to monitor compliance with international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Geneva Conventions, makes such denunciations extremely sparingly. Over the past 20 years the organisation has aired concerns over violations in Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, Bosnia and Rwanda and Israel.

Kellenberger said government restrictions in Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962, have made it impossible for ICRC staff to move around independently and hampered the delivery of aid meant for humanitarian, apolitical purposes.

The organisation has been unable since late 2005 to visit any of Myanmar's estimated 1,100 political prisoners because authorities have not allowed it to conduct interviews privately, insisting that government-affiliated agencies also take part.

ICRC staff have not visited detained opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi since September 2003. Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended for another year in May despite international pleas to free her, has been confined for more than 11 of the past 17 years.

Myanmar escaped censure at the U.N. Security Council in January after China and Russia vetoed a draft U.S. resolution calling on the regime to stop persecuting minority and opposition groups.

In a statement, Kellenberger called on leaders in Yangon "to put a stop of all violations of international humanitarian law and to ensure that they do not recur".

He said the ICRC, which has 13 expatriates and more than 160 national staff in Myanmar, intended to keep pursuing its humanitarian activities for those needing assistance in the country, but did not elaborate.

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