Envoy fails to meet junta chief

Yangon: A United Nations envoy held back-to-back meetings yesterday with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the Myanmar junta in his bid to defuse the political crisis that has engulfed the country.

But Ebrahim Gambari, the UN's special envoy to Myanmar, failed to see either the junta leader, Senior Gen Than Shwe, or his deputy early yesterday, and was returning late yesterday to the junta's headquarters for a possible third meeting.

Gambari "looks forward to meeting ... Than Shwe," before he leaves the region, a UN statement said.

It said Gambari met with the acting prime minister, the deputy foreign minister and the ministers of information and culture in the junta's new bunker-like capital Naypyitaw, 385 kilometres north of Yangon.

While these officials have senior positions in the ruling coterie, the final say in all decisions rests with Than Shwe, and to some extent Deputy Senior Gen Maung Aye.

Locked down

The swift diplomatic developments occurred as thousands of troops locked down Myanmar's largest cities yesterday.

Scores of people were arrested over-night, further weakening a flagging uprising to end 45 years of military dictatorship that began August 19 with protests against fuel price increases.

The protests drew international attention after thousands of Buddhist monks joined the people in venting anger at decades of brutal military rule. At the height of the protests, some 70,000 people turned out, which were crushed on Wednesday and Thursday when government troops opened fire into the crowds.

The government says 10 people were killed but independent sources say the number is far higher.

A video shot yesterday by a dissident group, Democratic Voice of Burma, showed a monk, covered in bruises, floating face down in a Yangon river.

It was not clear how long the body had been in the river.

Pope calls for an end to crackdown

A worried Pope Benedict XVI added his voice yesterday to calls for Myanmar's military leaders to peacefully end their crackdown on protesters demanding democracy.

Benedict made his first public comments on the deadly crackdown a few hours after a UN special envoy met with some Myanmar government leaders and detained opposition leader Aung San Sui Kyi, whose steadfast, peaceful challenge to the regime earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She has spent years under house arrest.

"I am following with great trepidation the very serious events" in Myanmar, the pope told pilgrims at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo outside Rome.

He expressed his spiritual closeness to the "dear" people of Myanmar during their "painful trial" and he asked the entire Catholic Church to follow his lead in praying intensely for them.