"I asked for a moratorium on leveling buildings over 50 years old, " Thant says.
"Right now, Yangon is a colonial treasure with no parallel in Southeast Asia, " says Thant.
In 1961, the General Assembly unanimously elected U Thant acting secretary general of the U.N.
Naypyitaw, he paid tribute to former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant at a memorial in Yangon.
The 46-year-old Thant Myint-U is the natural candidate to save Yangon's cosmopolitan past.
It was here that U Thant learned the ways of the world before guiding it at the United Nations.
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Mr Thant is an academic historian and the grandson of U Thant, secretary-general of the United Nations in the 1960s.
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So their views, which do not match Mr Thant's, also carry weight.
When U Thant visited Nepal in April 1967 as Secretary-General of the United Nations, he proposed the development of Lumbini into a major centre of pilgrimage.
Thant realized that Yangon's heritage was in danger but had little success raising the issue with local officials until late 2011, when he met with several government ministers.
The Secretary-General then visited the UN House in Yangon, where he planted a tree sapling, unveiled a plaque commemorating his visit and inaugurated a new U Thant Conference Room in the complex.
This time Mr Thant's travels take him to Myanmar's hill country, near the Chinese border, to the other side of the frontier, in Yunnan province, and to Assam and Manipur in north-east India, on Myanmar's other flank.
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