Dissidents Held As U.N. Envoy Visits Burma

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The New York Sun

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council’s praise of the role U.N. envoys are playing in advancing the cause of ending repression in Burma met yesterday with a clear message from the country’s military leaders, who greeted a visiting U.N. human rights envoy by arresting two leading dissidents.

Leading council members highlighted the unprecedented visit by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, who landed yesterday in the country’s military capital, Naypyidaw, as a sign of progress. But as Mr. Pinheiro met with midlevel members of the military junta, a leading labor activist, Suu Suu Nway, and a student leader, Bo Bo win Hlaing, were arrested in Rangoon.

The council met here yesterday afternoon to hear a report from Secretary-General Ban’s envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, about his trip there last week. The highlight of the five-day visit was a message Mr. Gambari read in Singapore on behalf of the jailed opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, urging a “time-bound” dialogue with the junta. Earlier in his trip, however, as Mr. Gambari was in Naypyidaw, the junta arrested the leader of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, U Gambira.

“The situation in Burma today is not near yet to the conditions when a meaningful and time-bound dialogue can happen,” the director of the Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma, Aung Din, said yesterday.

During his visit, Mr. Gambari was blocked from seeing the top Burmese military leader, General Than Shwe, but yesterday members of the Security Council signaled that it would ease pressure on the junta. Burma’s main defenders urged more engagement with the regime.

“Rome was not built in one day,” the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Guangya, told the council. Mr. Gambari is “on the right track,” Mr. Wang said, and his success should not be “based on whom he met.”

The only council members who mentioned yesterday’s arrests were the British ambassador to the United Nations, John Sawers, France’s ambassador, Jean-Maurice Ripert, and the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. While cautiously endorsing Mr. Gambari’s mission, Mr. Khalilzad said it did not represent a “fundamental shift.” He called for a policy that would mix “both pressure and engagement.”


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