Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party dismissed the Myanmar junta's offer of talks as surreal yesterday, while China said the ruthless suppression of pro-democracy protests did not require international action.
Senior General Than Shwe, who caused international outrage by sending in soldiers to crush peaceful monk-led demonstrations, was asking Suu Kyi to abandon the campaign for democracy that has kept her in detention for 12 of the last 18 years, a spokesman said.
"They are asking her to confess to offenses that she has not committed," said Nyan Win, spokesman for the Nobel peace laureate's National League for Democracy (NLD), whose landslide election victory in 1990 was ignored by the generals.
Than Shwe, head of the latest junta in 45 unbroken years of military rule of Myanmar, set out his conditions for direct talks at a meeting with special UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on Tuesday, state-run television said.
It announced the terms on the eve of Gambari's report on his mission to the UN Security Council, saying Suu Kyi must abandon "confrontation," give up "obstructive measures" and support for sanctions and "utter devastation," a phrase it did not explain.
Nyan Win demanded Suu Kyi be allowed to respond in public.
That is unlikely. The only time Suu Kyi has been seen in public since she was last detained in May 2003 was during one monk-led demonstration when protesters were inexplicably allowed through the barricades sealing off her street.
People who applauded protest marches from the sidewalk could face two to five years in jail, said Win Min, who fled to Thailand in 1988 as the army crushed an uprising at the cost of around 3,000 lives. Leaders could face 20 years, he said.
The Norway-based opposition Democratic Voice of Burma quoted relatives as saying about 50 students who demonstrated in Mandalay had been sentenced to five years hard labor.
Meanwhile, the top US diplomat in Myanmar Shari Villarosa held rare talks yesterday with the military junta yesterday.
Villarosa, who has been a vocal critic of the crackdown, met with Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint in Naypyitaw, the regime's remote capital, a US embassy official said.
The official said she returned to Yangon yesterday, but refused to elaborate.
He said the details would be revealed by the State Department spokesman later yesterday.
China, however, continued to oppose international action.
"There are problems there in Myanmar, but these problems still, we believe, are basically internal," Chinese Ambassador to the UN Wang Guangya (王光亞) told reporters.
"No international-imposed solution can help the situation," Wang said.
"We want the government there to handle this issue," he said.
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