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Myanmar junta stalls UN special envoy

Myanmar's leader stalled a UN envoy for yet another day yesterday, delaying until today his chance to present world demands for an end to the junta's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy who has been in Myanmar since Saturday, has finally been given an appointment to meet with Senior General Than Shwe today in the junta's remote bunker-like capital, Naypyitaw, an Asian diplomat said.

Instead of the meeting he had hoped for yesterday, Gambari was taken on a government-sponsored trip to attend a seminar in the far northern Shan state on the EU's relations with Southeast Asia, other diplomats said. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

Gambari is expected to return to Yangon today to catch a flight out of the country, the diplomats said.

In a two-line statement, the UN said Gambari "remains in Myanmar. He looks forward to meeting Senior General Than Shwe and other relevant interlocutors before the conclusion of his mission."

While the junta stalled Gambari, a show of force over the weekend in the country's main cities virtually snuffed out protests. Yesterday, the troops pulled back, removing road blocks and appearing to ease their stranglehold on Yangon, the country's biggest city.

Public anger, which ignited on Aug. 19 after the government hiked fuel prices, turned into mass protests against 45 years of military dictatorship when Buddhist monks joined in. Soldiers responded last week by opening fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing at least 10 people by the government's count.

A Norway-based dissident news organization, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), said that pro-democracy activists estimate 138 people were killed.

"Our own estimate is about 6,000 people detained, not killed, but detained," including about 2,400 monks, DVB chief editor Aye Chan Naing said in Oslo.

He said they are being held in at least four places -- the infamous Insein Prison, a pharmaceutical factory, a technical institute and a disused race course.

His reporters had spoken to one family whose son was wounded by gunfire in Yangon, brought to a hospital on Sept. 28 and disappeared on Sunday, he said.

In Yangon, there was a clear sense that the anti-democracy protests had once again failed in the face of the junta's overwhelming military might, which was last used in 1988 to crush a much larger uprising.

"The people are angry but afraid -- many are poor and struggling in life so they don't join the protests anymore," Thet, a 30-year-old university graduate who is now driving a taxi, said yesterday.

"I think the protests are over because there is no hope pressing them," a 68-year-old teacher said.

In the afternoon, trucks full of police and soldiers arrived in downtown Yangon. Small vendors immediately packed up and left, while other stores hurriedly closed their windows, fearing trouble.

Some monks were allowed to leave monasteries to collect food donations, watched by soldiers lounging under trees. Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the two main flash points of unrest, were also reopened, but there were few visitors.

Monks appeared to be paying a heavy price for their role in spearheading the demonstrations.

Another Asian diplomat said yesterday all the arrested monks had been defrocked -- stripped of their highly revered status and made to wear civilian clothes. Some of them are likely to face long jail terms, the diplomat said, also on condition of anonymity.

In Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city, security forces arrested dozens of university students who staged a street protest on Sunday, a witness said.

The junta has not commented on Gambari's mission. Since arriving on Saturday, he has met with junior members of the junta in Naypyitaw and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon on Sunday.

Gambari's hour-long talk with Aung San Suu Kyi was unexpected -- he did not know before he arrived if he would be allowed to meet the 1991 Nobel Peace prize winner, who has come to symbolize the struggle for democracy in Myanmar. She has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party was not optimistic Gambari would wield any influence over the junta leaders.

The junta has never responded well to international pressure in the past and has rebuffed UN efforts to bring about reconciliation with Aung San Suu Kyi.

But its desire for oil and gas investment, increased tourism and its status as a member of ASEAN means it cannot follow a completely isolated path, as it has in the past.

"I do think a number of underlying dynamics have changed quite fundamentally and make us more hopeful that something might happen," British Ambassador to Myanmar Mark Canning said.
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