UN envoy meets with Myanmar's military leader
The Associated Press / October 02, 2007

A UN envoy has met with Myanmar's military leader in a bid to end the country's political crisis, as the junta's foreign minister defended a deadly crackdown on protesters.

A foreign diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, says Ibrahim Gambari, the UN's special envoy to Myanmar, met with Senior General Than Shwe in the junta's remote new capital Naypyitaw.

No details of the meeting are available.

While Mr. Gambari was trying to broker peace, the junta's security forces lightened their presence in Yangon, the country's main city, which remained quiet after troops and police crushed mass protests last week.

Dissident groups say up to 200 protesters were slain, compared with the government's report of 10 deaths and 6,000 detained.

Foreign Minister Nyan Win told the UN General Assembly in New York City normalcy has returned in Myanmar.

He added security forces acted with restraint for a month but had to “take action to restore the situation.”

Nyan Win made no reference to the deaths. Instead, he blamed foreign elements for the violrnce.

“Recent events make clear that there are elements within and outside the country who wish to derail the ongoing process (toward democracy) so that they can take advantage of the chaos that would follow,” Nyan Win said.

“They have become more and more emboldened and have stepped up their campaign to confront the government,” he said.

Mr. Gambari has been in the country since Saturday but Than Shwe, who is notoriously difficult to meet, did not make himself available until Tuesday.

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962 and the current junta came to power in 1988 after crushing a much larger pro-democracy movement in which about 3,000 people are believed to have been killed. The generals called elections in 1990 but refused to give up power when Suu Kyi's party won.

Simmering anger against the junta exploded in mid-August after it hiked fuel prices as much as 500 per cent.