UN envoy returns from Burma
Updated on 02 October 2007
The United Nations' envoy Ibrahim Gambari has returned from his four-day trip after meeting with Burma's military leader, Than Shwe.
The United Nations' envoy Ibrahim Gambari has just returned from his four-day trip to Burma. Pictures have been shown for the first time of his meeting with Burma's 74-year-old military leader Than Shwe.
It is not yet clear what his visit has achieved, but the envoy is expected to leave Singapore tomorrow for New York where he will report his findings to the UN's Secretary General by Friday.
The mission
Gambari, former Nigerian foreign minister, flew to Naypyidaw, Burma's new jungle capital, to convey international outrage at last week's military crackdown, which prompted "revulsion" in southeast Asian neighbours and a rare Chinese call for restraint.
Gambari also met opposition leader, 62-year Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, on Tuesday at the end of his four-day mission to halt a bloody crackdown on the biggest democracy protests in 20 years.
Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for nearly 12 of the last 18 years.
'They are going from apartment to apartment, shaking things inside, threatening the people. You have a climate of terror all over the city.'Bangkok-based Burma expert
Rangoon today
Witnesses have reported slightly fewer troops on Rangoon's streets on Tuesday, but raids on homes by pro-junta gangs looking for dissident monks and civilians suggested Gambari's nascent 'shuttle diplomacy' and international calls for restraint had made little difference.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won a massive election landslide in 1990 only to be denied power by the army, said 130 of its members and other activists had been detained.
Death toll
The truth is that nobody knows how many died in the crackdown, which many feared would descend into a repeat of 1988, when the army was sent in to crush a nationwide uprising and killed an estimated 3,000 people over several months.
Buddhist monks say six of their brethren were killed in clashes with security forces and night raids on monasteries in which hundreds of monks were carted off. Neighbourhood witnesses said many were kicked and beaten.
One shocking picture of the body of a maroon-robed, shaven-headed monk lying in a pond has been posted on dissident news websites and there are unconfirmed reports of monks caged at a technical institute in north Rangoon on hunger strike.
Plea for moderate measures
In a speech to the annual General Assembly, Burma's Foreign Minister Nyan Win said 'normalcy' had returned and urged the international community to refrain from measures he said would add fuel to the fire.
One of Asia's brightest prospects and the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, Burma is now one of the region's poorest countries despite an abundance of timber, gems, oil and natural gas.
The protests began with small marches against fuel price rises in mid-August but intensified when soldiers shot over the heads of protesting monks, causing the monasteries to mobilise.
Source: Reuters
