U.N. Envoy Heads Into Myanmar Maelstrom

By REUTERS

Filed at 10:57 p.m. ET

YANGON (Reuters) - United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari travels to Myanmar on Saturday carrying worldwide hopes he can persuade its ruling generals to use negotiations instead of guns to end mass protests against 45 years of military rule.

"He's the best hope we have. He is trusted on both sides," Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said. "If he fails, then the situation can become quite dreadful."

So far, the junta appears to have ignored the international clamor for a peaceful end to what blossomed from tiny protests against shock fuel price rises in August into a mass uprising led by monks, the moral core of the Buddhist nation.

Yangon was eerily quiet on Saturday morning after troops and riot police barricaded off the city centre from where the protests have reverberated around the world.

Authorities have told foreign diplomats based in Yangon that the trouble was being handled with restraint.

So far, that has meant raiding at least a dozen monasteries thought to be at the van of the protests, detaining perhaps hundreds of monks and sealing off city areas around two pagodas which marked the start and end of the daily mass protests.

So far, it appears to be working and the junta restored international Internet links early on Saturday after cutting them the previous day following a flood of pictures and video of soldiers chasing protesters traveling through it to the world.

On Friday, very few monks took part in the much smaller protests around the barricades. People in Yangon said many young monks were evading arrest by casting off their maroon robes and taking refuge in houses disguised as laymen.

"Peace and stability has been restored," state-run newspapers declared on Saturday, after security forces handled protests "with care, using the least possible force."

SCARED CITY BRACED

However, people in the neighborhood reported the Minnada monastery was raided on Friday and that shots were fired.

Monks have reported six of their brethren have been killed since the army started cracking down on Wednesday to end mass protests by columns of monks flanked by supporters who filled five city blocks.

Yeo said he did not think there would be much action on the streets while Gambari was in Myanmar, but people in Yangon were braced for more of the cat and mouse protests which had kept the city tense on Friday.

Crowds taunted and cursed security forces for hours on Friday around the barbed-wire barriers in a city terrified of a repeat of 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3,000 people in crushing an uprising in the country, then known as Burma.

When the troops charged, the protesters vanished into narrow side streets, only to emerge elsewhere to renew their abuse until an overnight curfew took effect.

State-run media admit nine people have been killed since the crackdown began, prompting international outrage.

"I am afraid we believe the loss of life is far greater than is being reported," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Friday after talking to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Bush and Brown discussed the need to maintain international pressure on Myanmar's rulers and the White House condemned the crackdown as "barbaric."

INTERNATIONAL CLAMOUR

Bush authorized new U.S. sanctions on Thursday against the Myanmar government, which has been operating under similar restrictions for years.

The European Union summoned Myanmar's senior diplomat in Brussels and warned him of tighter sanctions.

EU experts looked into possible restrictions on exports from Myanmar of timber, precious metals and gems, but reached no decisions, one diplomat said. Investments by specific Europeans in the country were not raised, he said.

Activist Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign U.K., calling the EU sanctions "pathetic," said a freeze on assets had netted less than 7,000 euros in all 27 EU member states and many countries allowed their companies to do business in Myanmar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said sanctions were premature but he was sorry to hear about civilian deaths. "As far as sanctions are concerned, this is a topic to be especially considered in the United Nations," he Putin.

Russia, like China, is a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council and has shown growing interest in Myanmar's rich gas fields.

China, the junta's main ally, publicly called for restraint

for the first time on Thursday. But at the United Nations, China has ruled out supporting sanctions or a U.N. condemnation of the military government's use of force.

The Association of South East Asian Nations, which rarely criticizes a member directly, expressed "revulsion" at the crackdown.

There were protests across Asia on Friday, with many people wearing red to symbolize the blood spilled in Myanmar, and outside the United Nations building in New York.