Myanmar junta arrests more; UN envoy in Singapore

YANGON - Myanmar's junta arrested more people on Wednesday hours after the departure of a U.N. envoy who came to the country to try to end a bloody crackdown on protests which sparked international outrage.

At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of downtown Yangon, the former Burma's biggest city and centre of last week's monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.

In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the devoutly Buddhist country and starting point for the rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents had been taken, she said.

"They warned us not to run away as they might be back," she said after people from rows of shophouses were ordered onto the street in the middle of the night and many taken away.

The crackdown continued despite some hopes of progress by U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his mission to persuade junta chief Than Shwe to relax his iron grip and open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he met twice.

Singapore, chairman of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) of which Myanmar is a member, said it "was encouraged by the access and cooperation given by the Myanmar government to Mr Gambari."

Gambari was in Singapore on Wednesday on his way back to New York but was unlikely to say anything publicly before speaking to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a U.N. official told Reuters.

U.N. sources said he was expected to return to Myanmar in early November.

There were no indications of how his mission and international pressure might change the policies of a junta which seldom heeds outside pressure and rarely admits U.N. officials.

"I don't expect much to come of this. I think the top leadership is so entrenched in their views that it's not going to help," said David Steinberg, a Georgetown University expert on Myanmar.

"They will say they are on the road to democracy and so what do you want anyway?", he added, referring to the junta's "seven-step road to democracy".

The first of the seven steps has been completed with the end of an on-off 14-year national convention which produced guidelines for a constitution that critics say will entrench military rule and exclude Suu Kyi from office.

"NORMALCY RESTORED"

The junta says the monk-led protests -- which filled five city blocks -- were countered with "the least force possible" and Yangon and other cities had returned to normal.

The ruling generals appear to believe they have suppressed the protests and have lifted the barricades around the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the focal points of the demonstrations, eased an overnight curfew by two hours and released some of the monks swept up in widespread raids on monasteries.

The demonstrations, the biggest challenge to the junta's power in nearly 20 years, began with small marches against shock fuel price rises in August and swelled after troops fired over the heads of a group of monks.

One young monk said 80 of the 96 taken from his monastery were allowed to return during Wednesday night after being threatened verbally but not physically during interrogation.

"We were forced to change into civilian dress before they interrogated us," the freed monk said. "They questioned us day and night but we were fed two meals a day."

However, there was still a heavy armed presence on the streets of Yangon and Mandalay, the second city, witnesses said.

The junta is also sending gangs through homes looking for monks in hiding, sweeping raids that Western diplomats say are creating a climate of terror.

There was no let up in international anger at the ruthless response to the peaceful protests.

In Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Council, including China, the closest thing the regime has to an ally, condemned the junta's "violent repression".

It called on the generals to allow the U.N. human rights envoy to Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, to visit for the first time in four years. He said the number detained was now in the thousands.

"Light must absolutely be shed on what happened," Pinheiro told the council, which adopted a resolution deploring beatings, killings and detentions. Myanmar said the hearing was being used by "powerful countries for political exploitation".

In Washington, the Senate and House of Congress passed resolutions loaded with passionate language to condemn the crackdown.

But nothing has emerged to suggest the generals are prepared to make a deal with Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won a landslide 1990 election victory the junta ignored.

So far, ASEAN's policy of "constructive engagement" has shown no signs of achieving the "national reconciliation and a peaceful transition to democracy" in Myanmar Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told Gambari on Wednesday it wanted.

The junta has ignored years of Western sanctions on Myanmar, one of Asia's brightest prospects and the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948 but now one of the region's poorest despite an abundance of natural resources.

"The NLD has been saying we're prepared to talk, we're not being absolutist, but Than Shwe is being absolutist, at least according to all reports, and that is a problem," Steinberg said.