NYT : Myanmar Delays Meeting With Envoy

Myanmar Delays Meeting With Envoy

By SETH MYDANS | October 1, 2007

BANGKOK, Oct. 1 — The top leaders of Myanmar’s military junta delayed for a second day a meeting with a United Nations envoy who went to the country to urge restraint, after the violent suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators last week.

Diplomats in Myanmar said the envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, who had hoped to meet with the junta’s top leader, Senior General Than Shwe, on Sunday, was now scheduled to see him on Tuesday. Mr. Gambari’s hosts took him today to a seminar on relations between Europe and Southeast Asia, according to the diplomats, who requested anonymity in keeping with embassy policy.

The United Nations Security Council and several governments condemned the violence and emphasized the importance they placed on the top junta leaders meeting with Mr. Gambari.

The streets of Yangon, the country’s main city, were reported to be quiet today after the crackdown that began last Thursday on the antigovernment demonstrations, the largest this country had seen since the junta came to power in 1988. Soldiers were removing barricades and reopening access to the two pagodas that had been gathering places for the protests.

There was still no word on more than 1,000 people, including 700 Buddhist monks, who were reported to have been arrested. Diplomats and human rights groups said it was impossible to estimate the number of people who had been killed. They said the number was certainly higher than the 10 deaths acknowledged by the government.

The demonstrations, which at their height early last week brought an estimated 100,000 people into the streets of Yangon to demand an end to military rule, were sparked by widespread anger over steep fuel prices in August and swelled as Buddhist monks took a leading role.

On Sunday, Mr. Gambari was allowed to meet in Yangon with the pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been held under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years. Mr. Gambari was the last high-level foreign official to see her previously, on a visit last November.

Before meeting Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr. Gambari was received by lower-ranking members of the junta in the country’s administrative capital, Naypyidaw.

After those meetings, the United Nations issued a statement saying that Mr. Gambari “looks forward to meeting Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, before the conclusion of his mission.”

Mr. Gambari arrived in Yangon on Saturday, then flew to Naypyidaw, about 200 miles away, to meet members of the government, and returned to Yangon on Sunday. He flew back to Naypyidaw on Sunday night in the hope of meeting General Than Shwe.

When Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations dispatched Mr. Gambari on Sept. 26, the Security Council issued a statement that “urged restraint” by the government and “underlined the importance that Mr. Gambari be received by the authorities of Myanmar as soon as possible.”

Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors also said it was urgent that the junta receive Mr. Gambari as a representative of international concern.

As condemnation of the junta has continued, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, have issued increasingly sharp statements, moving away from what had proved a fruitless policy of friendly persuasion.

“I would like to emphasize the importance which the Asean countries, and indeed the whole international community, attach to Mr. Gambari’s mission,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien-loong of Singapore wrote in a letter to the generals dated Sept. 29 but released to reporters today.

“We are most disturbed by reports of the violent means that the authorities in Myanmar have deployed against the demonstrators, which have resulted in injuries and deaths,” Mr. Lee wrote. Singapore currently presides over Asean; Myanmar is one of the 10 members of the group. “The videos and photographs of what is happening on the streets of Yangon and other cities in Myanmar have evoked the revulsion of people throughout Southeast Asia and all over the world,” he wrote.

In an effort to shut down the flow of news from the closed and tightly controlled nation, the authorities have cut off Internet connections and have harassed and arrested local journalists.

News organizations reported that at least four Burmese journalists, including Min Zaw of the Japanese daily Tokyo Shimbun, had been arrested, and several others were presumed to have been arrested.

About 10 Burmese reporters have been physically attacked or prevented from working, including reporters for Reuters and Agence France-Presse, according to Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association.

A Japanese photographer, Kenji Nagai, was shot and killed at the height of the demonstrations last week, drawing protests from the Japanese government. In Tokyo, the chief Cabinet spokesman, Nobutaka Machbimura, said Japan was considering sanctions to protest the junta’s crackdown.

Reporters Without Borders said that a military censorship department, known as the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, was harassing editors to get them to bring out issues of their newspapers and magazines containing propaganda articles. Human rights groups said some of magazines had suspended publication rather than carry these reports.

Striking back, the junta was pointing its finger at the international community. The government had been handling the protests “with care, using the least possible force,” said the government’s English-language mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, on its Web site.

“Internal and external destructionists are applying various means to destroy those constructive endeavors by the government and the people and to cause unrest and instability,” it said.

One article urged people not to believe the news being reported by foreign radio stations and summed up its message with the headline: “Skyful of liars attempting to destroy the nation.”