UN envoy, Myanmar opposition head meet

YANGON 9Myanmar)—Myanmar’s government unexpectedly allowed the country’s leading opposition figure, Aung San Suu Kyi, to leave house arrest briefly on Sunday and meet with a U.N. envoy trying to persuade the junta to ease its crackdown against a pro-democracy uprising.
But thousands of troops locked down Myanmar’s largest cities, and scores of people were arrested overnight, further weakening the flagging movement. And Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.’s special envoy to Myanmar, failed to see either the junta leader or his deputy in his scheduled meetings. The diplomat was returning late Sunday to the military government’s headquarters for a possible third meeting.
The demonstrations seeking to end 45 years of military dictatorship drew international attention after thousands of Buddhist monks joined in. At the height of the protests, some 70,000 people turned out, but were crushed on Wednesday and Thursday when government troops opened fire into the crowds.
The government says 10 people were killed, but independent sources say the number is far higher. A video shot Sunday by a dissident group, Democratic Voice of Burma, showed a monk, covered in bruises, floating face down in a Yangon river. It was not clear how long the body had been in the river.
A U.N. statement said Ibrahim Gambari met Sunday with the acting prime minister, the deputy foreign minister and the ministers of information and culture. While these officials have senior positions in the ruling coterie, the final say in all decisions rests with junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and to some extent Deputy Senior Gen. Maung Aye.
Gambari “looks forward to meeting ... Than Shwe,” before he leaves the region, a U.N. statement said. Gambari’s efforts began on Saturday when he came from Singapore to Yangon and was immediately flown to Naypyitaw. After his meetings Sunday, he returned to Yangon and was whisked to the State Guest House to meet Suu Kyi, who was brought out of house arrest to see him in what appeared to be an unexpected concession by the junta.
Gambari and Suu Kyi met for over an hour, the U.N. statement said, but gave no details. “We want Mr. Gambari to stay here long enough to get under way a genuine process of national reconciliation,” Britain’s ambassador Mark Canning said. “He should be given as much time as that takes. That will require access to senior levels of government as well as a range of political actors.”
The U.N. has repeatedly failed to bring about a reconciliation between the military government and the pro-democracy opposition. Gambari and his predecessor, Razali Ismail of Malaysia, have also failed to secure freedom for Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace prize winner who has come to symbolize the struggle for democracy in Myanmar.
Her National League for Democracy party won the 1990 general elections, which the junta called after crushing a much larger pro-democracy movement in 1988. But the party was never allowed to take power, and many of its top members were jailed. Suu Kyi has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.
On Sunday, the number of troops in Yangon, the largest city, swelled to about 20,000 after reinforcements arrived overnight, ensuring that almost all demonstrators would remain off the streets, an Asian diplomat said on condition of anonymity.—Agencies