Unknown gunmen assassinated Pado Manh Sha, leader of the Karen National Union, in his Mae Sot home on Thursday afternoon. In a recent unpublished interview with journalist Phil Thornton, he discussed plots to kill him and his hopes for the Karen.

Pado Manh Sha sat outside his home, enjoying the late-afternoon sunset, after an interview with a foreign analyst on Thursday.

A blue pickup stopped outside. A man got out of the vehicle and walked to the house, shook hands with Mahn Sha and then shot him dead. One of Manh Sha's staff gave chase as the gunman and an accomplice fled.

In our interview, Manh Sha said he had received warnings and took seriously an intelligence report that the Burmese military dictatorship had plans to kill Karen National Union leaders.

He said Karen intelligence officers had briefed him and he had warned other leaders to up their security. Manh Sha expected the attempt on his life would be at night and had taken steps to sleep in various locations. But he insisted on spending his days at his home, mainly because he enjoyed the view across the paddy field from his seat on the porch.

Saw Hla Henry, a Karen leader, said Manh Sha would be missed. "He was a strong man for the Karen people. He was smart and detested by the [Burmese] regime. Everything he was, was for the Karen; all Karen."

He was a constant thorn in the junta's plans to show the international community it was moving towards democracy. "We want to resolve our problems by peaceful means, but the Burmese don't want that; they like the battlefield too much," he said in the interview.

Manh Sha was incensed by attacks on Karen villagers that had forced 76,000 to relocate. The Thai-Burma Border Consortium says the Burmese army destroyed more than 3,000 villages between 1996 and 2006 in Karen State.

"These people are not soldiers. They're civilians. They [the Burmese army] kill, burn, torture our people and landmine our villages. We want peace, justice and we want to be part of a federation of Burma."

Manh Sha was an internationalist. He was enthusiastic about plans to form an ethnic alliance with Burmese opposition groups that could effectively combat the regime. "The time of dictators is over - we live in the 21st century. It's time for the Burmese generals to make genuine peace with their people," he said.

Always accommodating to the international community and news media, Manh Sha felt more needed to be done for them to see Burma as more than a local problem.