BURMA:The UN special envoy seeking a resolution to the bloody crisis in Burma (Myanmar) is to meet the regime's top general today to deliver a tough message that the killings which left at least 13 protesters dead must stop.
But yesterday Ibrahim Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister, was stalled for a day and forced to fill in his time visiting a remote corner of Burma courtesy of the military as tensions remained following 12 days of demonstrations that represented the most concerted challenge to the junta's rule since 1988. An uneasy calm returned to the streets of the main city, Rangoon, yesterday as troops withdrew cordons from the two pagodas that served as a rallying point for the pro-democracy demonstrations.
However, exile groups remain deeply concerned about the fate of about 400 students and 1,000 arrested monks whose presence had provided a highly-visible lead for the protests and blessed them with moral authority in devoutly Buddhist Burma.
The UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's special representative, Mr Gambari, was kept far from the potential flashpoints. After spending an hour with the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday, he flew back to Naypidaw, the capital in the jungle 240 miles north-east of Rangoon.
Yesterday he travelled further north by Burmese military helicopter to the town of Lashio, in Shan state near the Chinese border, to an obscure government-sponsored workshop.
The curious episode appeared to reflect the weakness of his position and the idiosyncratic nature of the 74-year-old Burmese leader, Gen Than Shwe. But Burmese officials said that the leader would meet the emissary today.
Political analyst and Burmese exile Win Min believes Mr Gambari will now have the opportunity to conduct shuttle diplomacy, conveying a message from Ms Suu Kyi to the general, and present an unvarnished image of the scale of the violence about which the ailing and reclusive general may be in the dark.
Some analysts fear that once Mr Gambari departs, Rangoon could suffer a heavy-handed crackdown if protesters again take to the streets.
"It seems that a fierce regime has succeeded in terrifying a whole new generation; terrifying them from speaking up," said Liselot Agerlide, a Swedish diplomat who has just spent five days in Rangoon.
One western woman, a long-time Rangoon resident, spoke with a number of monks and discovered their spirit crushed and terrorised by the raids that reports said were still going on in the early hours of yesterday morning. Monks told how they feared the military would return to exact further retribution. -