U.N. envoy meets Myanmar junta chief, Suu Kyi

YANGON - U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari met separately with junta chief Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, ending a four-day mission to Myanmar to try to halt a crackdown on the biggest democracy protests in 20 years.
|PIC1|
Gambari expects to return to the former Burma in early November at the government's request, U.N. sources said.

As he left Myanmar, there was no word on whether Gambari's single meeting with Senior General Than Shwe, who rarely heeds the outside world, had persuaded him to relax his iron grip or start talks with Suu Kyi, a long-detained Nobel laureate.

Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister, was returning to New York on Friday after carrying a message from Suu Kyi to the military government, said the U.N. sources, who did not give further details.

Last week's monk-led protests in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, of up to 100,000 people and marches in other areas were halted by security forces who raided monasteries, imposed curfews and killed 10 people, by the official count.

The death toll is likely far higher, human rights groups and Western governments say. Some feared a repeat of 1988, when the army crushed a nationwide uprising and killed an estimated 3,000 people over several months.

In Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Council condemned "violent repression" in Myanmar and called on the junta to allow its investigator to visit for the first time in four years.

"Light must absolutely be shed on what happened," Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, told the council, which adopted a resolution by the European Union deploring beatings, killings and arbitrary detentions.

Gambari arrived in Singapore on Tuesday and was due to meet the city-state's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, on Wednesday. The statement by Singapore, which is current chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations and has been sharply critical of Myanmar's junta, gave no further details.

'CLIMATE OF TERROR'

Witnesses reported slightly fewer troops on the streets of Yangon on Tuesday.

But raids on homes by pro-junta gangs looking for dissident monks and civilians suggested Gambari's diplomacy and international calls for restraint had made little difference.

"They are going from apartment to apartment, shaking things inside, threatening the people," a Bangkok-based Myanmar expert with many friends in Yangon said.

"You have a climate of terror all over the city."

U.S. charge d'affaires Shari Villarosa told Reuters from Yangon that arrests continued throughout Gambari's mission.

"We have heard that arrests are continuing at night, like at 2 o'clock in the morning," she said. "This government keeps power through fear and intimidation and they are trying to intimidate people to stay off the streets."

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won an election landslide in 1990 only to be denied power by the army, said 130 of its members and other activists had been detained.

In another sign the army felt it had ended its most serious threat since the 1988 uprising, it shortened by two hours a night curfew imposed last week during the protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship.

HOPES FOR PROGRESS

"The international community has to put pressure on the Burmese authorities not to respond with force and to allow the democratic process to nurture," Ireland's Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern told Reuters at the United Nations.

"We would be hopeful that as a result of Gambari's involvement that something may come out of the shuttle meetings with the military leaders and Aung San Suu Kyi."

Gambari had flown to Naypyidaw, the new jungle capital, to convey international outrage at the crackdown, which prompted "revulsion" in Southeast Asian neighbors and a rare Chinese call for restraint.

Having met three minister-generals and Suu Kyi at the weekend, Gambari was made to wait until Tuesday for his audience with Than Shwe, a delay that did not augur well for those urging reconciliation.

At U.N. headquarters on Monday, Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win accused "political opportunists" of trying to create a showdown with foreign help to exploit the ensuing chaos.

In a speech to the annual General Assembly, he said "normalcy" had returned and urged the international community to refrain from measures he said would add fuel to the fire.

One shocking picture of the body of a maroon-robed, shaven-headed monk lying in a pond has been posted on dissident news Web sites and there are unconfirmed reports of monks caged at a technical institute in north Yangon on hunger strike.

Myanmar, one of Asia's brightest prospects and the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, is now one of the region's poorest countries despite an abundance of timber, gems, oil and natural gas.

It is also a major source of opium, the raw material of heroin, as well as amphetamines, smuggled logs and gems.