Support Erodes for U.N. Envoy To Burma Ahead of Visit

By BENNY AVNI, Staff Reporter of the Sun
March 6, 2008

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. envoy to Burma, scheduled to begin a long-delayed visit to Rangoon today, is losing the support of pro-democracy activists and advocates.

Ibrahim Gambari's scheduled trip, his third to Burma in the last year, is his first since the country's ruling junta announced plans to hold a national referendum on a proposed constitution in May and conduct a general election by 2010. It is unclear whether he will be allowed to meet with the junta leader, General Than Shwe, or opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Pro-democracy groups, however, are calling for Secretary-General Ban to travel to Burma in Mr. Gambari's place, and for the U.N. Security Council to increase the pressure on the regime.

"Let's give Mr. Gambari room to continue his efforts," a U.N. spokeswoman, Michele Montas, told The New York Sun yesterday. Still, the envoy has expressed frustration at the lack of substantial progress in Burma, and several critics have said his trips have achieved little. The suggestion that Mr. Ban should go to Burma was raised most recently at a U.N. meeting of ambassadors from a group of Western and Asian countries, including America, known as "friends of Myanmar." Mr. Ban "does not exclude" the possibility of a Burma trip to raise the mission's diplomatic profile, a diplomat familiar the situation said yesterday, but no decision has been made.

Critics point to Mr. Gambari's public assertions that the junta's so-called road map to democracy, denounced by various pro-democracy groups as a sham, is "a step in the right direction." The road map is "a step in the wrong direction," the executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, Aung Din, said.

In a letter to Mr. Ban this week, 92 elected members of parliament from various Burmese opposition groups pledged to "organize all the people of Burma to reject" the regime's plan to hold the May referendum. And in a letter last month, 10 Nobel Peace Prize laureates called on Mr. Ban to urge the Security Council to impose an arms embargo against the Burmese regime.

Under the proposed constitution, Ms. Suu Kyi — the jailed victor of the last election held in Burma, in 1990 — would be barred from running for office, as would nearly all the other democratic leaders ever arrested by the generals. The military leadership would have ultimate control over the presidency and would be granted the right to declare a national "emergency" at will.

Although the generals have granted Mr. Gambari an "open invitation" to visit Burma, they have controlled the schedule of his visits. The Security Council demanded in early February that he be allowed in quickly, but the junta said Mr. Gambari would have to wait until April. After much discussion and pressure from neighboring countries, today's trip was finally approved.

"I don't think the" generals "will listen and accept what Mr. Gambari says and urges them to do," the leader of an ethnic group in Burma, Aye Thar Aung, told the dissident Web site Mizzima News.

"If Gambari comes back with anything less than a date for genuine talks with Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic groups, and a commitment for the release of all political prisoners, then his mission has failed," the director of the Burma Campaign U.K., Anna Roberts, said.