Chiang Mai, Thailand - Fears that Myanmar's rebel groups will disrupt next year's planned election and cause greater instability in the military-run nation may lead China to put greater pressure on the regime to free Aung San Suu Kyi, a rebel spokesman said Friday.

"China will try its best because they don't want full-scale war to break out again in Myanmar," Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald News Agency, said.

"The Chinese will do their best but I'm not sure that they will be able to muster enough pressure on the junta to free Suu Kyi," Khuensai told a seminar in Chiang Mai, marking the 64th birthday of Myanmar opposition leader Suu Kyi, who is currently detained at Insein Prison in Yangon.

Khuensai argued that Beijing, one of Myanmar's few political allies, is worried that growing instability in the country will derail plans to build a natural gas pipeline from Sithui, on the Gulf of Martaban, to Yunnan province in southern China.

The pipeline will need to pass through territory currently controlled by various ethnic insurgent groups such as the Kachin.

Although Myanmar's junta has signed peace agreements with these groups, the pacts have floundered on a demand that the insurgents hand over most of their weapons and become local militias prior to a general election planned in 2010.

"There are 17 officials groups and four of them no longer exist now," said Khuensai. "So only 13 are left and of these 13, eight are definitely against the proposal of becoming border security forces."

That means they will not join the 2010 polls, and will return to fighting the Myanmar military, he claimed.

"It means that they will not participate in anything that this military government is doing," Khuensai said. Hence China's worries.

China has close business and investment relations with Myanmar. As a member of the United Nations Security Council it has repeatedly taken Myanmar off the agenda for discussion. (dpa)