BURMA:A United Nations envoy yesterday met the chief of Burma's military junta and held further talks with democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi in a hectic bout of "shuttle diplomacy" aimed at defusing political tensions.
After days of delays, Ibrahim Gambari, a special envoy despatched to Burma to try to prevent an escalation of violence, spent more than an hour with senior general Than Shwe and other junta leaders, including Gen Maung Aye, the regime's number two.
Mr Gambari then had a second meeting with Ms Suu Kyi, whom he had met on Sunday, before departing for New York, where he will report to the UN Security Council. UN officials remained tight-lipped on the substance of Mr Gambari's meetings with the generals and Ms Suu Kyi, with even Rangoon-based diplomats left in the dark.
The meetings came soon after Nyan Win, Burma's foreign minister, told the UN in New York that "normalcy has now returned" to Burma, following last week's crackdown on what he described as "political opportunists".
However, western diplomats and human rights groups are deeply concerned about the fate of thousands of people who have reportedly been arrested in Rangoon and other cities.
Tony Banbury, the regional head of the UN's World Food Programme, which is scaling up its aid to Burma, said that up to 1,000 civilians and monks who were being held in "totally inadequate conditions" at a technical institute in Rangoon on Sunday had been moved to an unknown location. "When there are large numbers of civilian, peaceful demonstrators that are arrested and detained in secret, it's a legitimate issue for the international community that they're not being abused and are being treated appropriately," he said.
David Mathieson, who monitors Burma for Human Rights Watch, said: "People in situations like this in the past in Burma have been treated abominably. They were beaten, abused and often tortured."
Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is trying to gather information on those being held, have not been granted access to prisons or other facilities holding detainees. While the regime has shortened its urban curfew hours from 10pm until 4am, a western diplomat said security forces were apparently carrying out night-time arrests of those thought to have been involved in last week's protests.
Many monasteries around Rangoon have been all but emptied.
Mark Canning, the British ambassador, said he believed that up to 1,000 monks remained in detention. "We are extremely worried about them," he said. Younger novices, less than 10 years old, are thought to have been sent home to their villages.
At a special session yesterday, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva castigated the authorities' violent repression of peaceful demonstrations, and called for the release of detainees. Louise Arbour, the UN's high commissioner for human rights, called on the junta to "give a full account for its actions during and after the protests". That must include "precise and verifiable information on the number of people killed and injured, as well as on the whereabouts and conditions of those who were arrested". -