The UN special envoy to Myanmar met with junta leaders yesterday as he paves the way for a visit by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon next month expected to focus on the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Nigerian diplomat Ibrahim Gambari was expected to meet Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win in the junta’s remote administrative capital, Naypyidaw, before returning to the main city of Yangon to round off his low-key visit.
Myanmar officials said no meetings with more senior military leaders could be confirmed, nor were there any immediate plans for Gambari to see Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, members of her party or international diplomats.
The UN troubleshooter arrived in the country for talks with the military regime on Friday and is due to brief UN chief Ban on the outcome of his two-day mission.
Ban will then decide whether to go ahead with plans to visit Myanmar early next month, UN sources in New York said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS
Ban and Gambari have been trying to persuade Myanmar’s ruling generals to free all political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and to steer their country on the path to democracy and national reconciliation.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 64, is being held in jail on charges of violating her house arrest after a US man, John Yettaw, swam to her lakeside house earlier this year.
She risks up to five years in prison if convicted.
She has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention since the ruling generals refused to recognize the landslide victory of her National League for Democracy party (NLD) in 1990 elections.
Critics accuse the junta of trying to keep her locked up ahead of elections promised for next year.
Gambari was named the top UN envoy for Myanmar in 2006 but his previous visits have produced few results.
Aung San Suu Kyi refused to meet him in August last year, apparently after he failed to secure reform pledges from the regime.
MONK PROTEST
The charges against Aung San Suu Kyi come amid a wide-ranging crackdown on the opposition that has been carried out since the ruling generals crushed protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007.
More than 2,100 political prisoners remain imprisoned, according to UN figures.
Yettaw, a devout Mormon and US military veteran, has told the trial that he swam to Aung San Suu Kyi’s home because he was on a mission from God to warn her about a “vision” that she would be assassinated.
The junta appeared to toughen its stance on the eve of Gambari’s visit when the national police chief held a press conference to show alleged links between Yettaw and exiled dissident groups based in Thailand.
The case has drawn widespread international condemnation, with US President Barack Obama describing it as a “show trial” and some of Myanmar’s neighbors breaking their usual silence on the issue.
The US and Europe have both imposed sanctions against Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion