A short stint working on behalf of Burma’s military junta six years ago is prompting the departure of two aides to Senator McCain, while other top advisers’ work for Saudi Arabia and China has drawn no public rebuke from the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

The CEO of this year’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Douglas Goodyear, resigned Saturday after Newsweek magazine reported that the lobbying firm Mr. Goodyear also heads, DCI Group, took $348,000 from Burma in 2002 to lead a campaign for better relations with America.

“I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign,” Mr. Goodyear said in a statement sent via e-mail to reporters. “I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign.”

Yesterday, a regional manager of Mr. McCain’s presidential bid, Douglas Davenport, resigned, a spokesman for the senator from Arizona confirmed. Mr. Davenport had overseen the Burma account at DCI Group.

The pair of resignations came as the military regime in Burma faces international condemnation for refusing visas to foreign aid workers seeking to provide relief from a cyclone earlier this month for which the death toll has been estimated at up to 100,000. However, other aides to Mr. McCain have more recent lobbying ties to regimes that are widely criticized for human rights violations, labor abuses, and other misconduct.

A co-chairman of Mr. McCain’s campaign, Thomas Loeffler, is a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia. Since 2006 his firm, the Loeffler Group, has received $10 million from the Saudi Embassy and the Saudi Ministry of Commerce and Industry, according to reports on file with the Foreign Agents Registration Act office at the Justice Department.

Those reports show that in addition to heading the firm, Mr. Loeffler worked directly on the Saudi account, escorting the Saudi Ambassador to America, Prince Turki, to meetings with three congressmen in June 2006.

In addition, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, Charles Black Jr., was the chairman of a Washington lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates, when it advised the largely state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation on its ultimately unsuccessful bid to take over Unocal Corp. Mr. Black resigned from BKSH in March.

An economist who served as Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1996 presidential campaign, Pat Choate, said it was difficult to draw lines which would render work for the Burmese unacceptable but work for the Saudis and the Chinese perfectly respectable. “You have several metrics,” Mr. Choate said. “Some nations, their interests seem odious to us so we call them ‘pariah states.’ Other nations we deal with in a civilized manner such as China, but their interests are different than ours.”

Mr. Choate said representing unsavory regimes is attractive to some lobbyists because of the pay. “Those who do pariahs get a bigger fee because there’s an odor attached,” he said.

The presence of a lobbyist for the Saudis and a former lobbyist for a Chinese firm in the top ranks of Mr. McCain’s campaign could be problematic because of his record crusading against lobbying excesses. “He’s campaigned against that. He’s made it a moral issue,” Mr. Choate said. “What he would not bring to government you would expect he would not bring to his campaign. … The American people should not be asked to tolerate this.”

A spokesman for Mr. McCain, Tucker Bounds, said the senator’s reputation on such issues is beyond reproach. “Anyone who knows John McCain knows that he stands on principle and he isn’t affected by the relationships of others or of other people’s relationships,” the spokesman said. On the campaign trail, Mr. McCain regularly warns that America’s dependency on foreign oil funds Middle Eastern regimes.

Last month, Senator Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, stepped down to a more limited role after labor groups objected to his work for Colombia on that country’s effort to win Congressional approval of a trade deal. President Clinton has also delivered paid speeches in Saudi Arabia. “Hillary Clinton’s husband has taken dollars from just about any foreign interest you can imagine. She doesn’t have a moral high ground on that one,” Mr. Choate said.

Some advisers and fund-raisers for Senator Obama are reported to have done foreign lobbying, but there is no indication that top campaign officials did such work. Spokesmen for Mr. Obama did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

America has diplomatic relations with Burma, China, and Saudi Arabia. America has economic sanctions on Burma but does not have such sanctions against China or Saudi Arabia.