UN envoy will meet Myanmar junta chief today

Yangon: Myanmar’s leader stalled a UN envoy for yet another day on Monday, delaying until Tuesday his chance to present world demands for an end to the junta’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy who has been in Myanmar since Saturday, has finally been given an appointment to meet Senior General Than Shwe on Tuesday in the junta’s remote capital, Naypyitaw, an Asian diplomat said.

Instead of the meeting he had hoped for on Monday, Gambari was taken on a government-sponsored trip to attend a seminar in the far northern Shan state on EU’s relations with Southeast Asia, said other diplomats. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

Gambari is expected to return to Yangon on Tuesday to catch a flight out of the country, the diplomats said.

On Monday, the troops pulled back, removing road blocks and appearing to ease their stranglehold on Yangon.

In Yangon, there was a palpable sense that the anti-democracy protests had once again failed in the face of the junta’s overwhelming military might, which was last used in 1988 to crush a much larger uprising.

Some monks were allowed to leave monasteries to collect food donations, watched by soldiers lounging under trees. Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the two main flash points of unrest, were also reopened, but there were few visitors.

Monks appeared to be paying a heavy price for their role in spearheading the demonstrations. Another Asian diplomat said on Monday all the arrested monks were defrocked — stripped of their highly revered status and made to wear civilian clothes. Some of them are likely to face long jail terms, the diplomat said, also on condition of anonymity.

Source: www.mumbaimirror.com