UN envoy meets junta chief, democratic icon in Burma

After finally holding talks with Burma's reclusive military leader Tuesday, a top UN envoy also met for a second time with Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's symbolic voice of democracy a surprising side trip during a UN mission to urge Burma to cease its brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN's special envoy to Burma, sat down first with the regime's rarely sighted leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, in the remote capital of Naypyitaw.

Little is known about the actual content since Gambari remained tightlipped about the meetings in thesoutheast Asian country also known as Myanmar.

Still, Gambari's immediate trip to see democracyadvocate Suu Kyi in the city of Rangoon, where she has been under house arrest for 18 years, was taken as a symbol of optimism that the UN diplomacy could be working.

"The fact that he was able to meet with the opposition right after his meetings with the generals means probably there is something there moving," the UN secretary-general's spokeswoman, Michele Montas, noted.

It was Gambari's second session with Suu Kyi since he arrived in Rangoon on Saturday.

Unnamed sources at the UN said the Burmese government has requested Gambari returnat the beginning ofNovember, according to a report from Reuters. No further details were provided.

Gambari is scheduled to meet Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong Wednesday, whose country currently chairs the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has expressed revulsion at the junta's violent suppression of demonstrators.

Gambari was also expected to brief the UN Security Council about what he discussed with Than Shwe and Suu Kyi, who is a Nobel peace laureate.

"We don't know at this point just yet [what was said], but at this point we have to wait for Mr. Gambari to come back here to find out more about what was said to him," Montas told CBC News on Tuesday. "We do know what his message [for Than Shwe] was."

Difficult to verify death tolls

Montas said Gambari was expected to express to Than Shwe the level of international condemnation his military junta had provoked since soldiers began violent action against thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators led by Buddhist monks. Gambari was to try to persuade Than Shwe to release detainees and "to move towards democratic reform and towards human rights protection," Montas said.

Protests against the government ignited Aug. 19 after it hiked fuel prices, but public anger ballooned into mass demonstrations led by Buddhist monks against 45 years of military dictatorship.

Soldiers responded last week by shooting at unarmed demonstrators. The government said 10 people were killed, but dissident groups said anywhere from several dozen to as many as 200 died in the crackdown.

It was impossible to independently verify the reports in the tightly controlled nation. One report in the British newspaper the Daily Mail quoted a former intelligence officer for the junta as saying "several thousand" monks were executed "in recent days."

Gambari was sent by the UN on Saturday to speak to Burma's military leadership, but Than Shwe avoided the meeting until Tuesday. In previous sparring with the UN and other international human-rights abuses, Burma has snubbed envoys and ignored diplomatic overtures, but Montas said Gambari and Than Shwe spoke for more than an hour before Gambari departed for Rangoon.

By Tuesday thegovernment had relaxed curfew restrictions to six hours (from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.) and also dismantled barbed-wire barriers around Rangoon's Shwedagon Pagoda, known as a flashpoint for the demonstrations last week.