UN troubleshooter Ibrahim Gambari is due in Myanmar today, a local official said, to lay the groundwork for a planned visit by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Gambari would confer with members of the ruling junta and politicians, including members of the party of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who is on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest, UN sources in New York said.
BRIEFING
He is to brief the UN chief on the outcome of his mission and Ban will then decide whether to go ahead with plans to visit Myanmar early next month, UN sources said on condition of anonymity.
A Myanmar official who would not be named said that Gambari would arrive today and leave tomorrow. He would land in the main city of Yangon and travel to the administrative capital Naypyidaw, the official said.
Diplomats in Yangon also said Gambari was expected today.
The UN sources had said Gambari was expected in Myanmar yesterday. There was no explanation for the discrepancy between the UN and Myanmar accounts but due to the time difference late Thursday New York time is early Friday Yangon time.
The UN boss and Gambari have been trying to persuade Myanmar’s military regime to free all political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and to steer their country on the path to democracy and national reconciliation.
DETENTION
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize laureate, has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention since the ruling generals refused to recognise the landslide victory of her National League for Democracy in 1990 elections.
She is being held on charges of violating her house arrest after an American man swam to her lakeside house earlier this year. Myanmar authorities were due to hold a press conference about the man, John Yettaw, later yesterday.
The charges against her 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.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS