YANGON (AFP) — UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari met Monday with Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win, state media said, shortly after he arrived in Yangon on a mission to open talks between the junta and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Myanmar's tightly controlled state television gave no details of the talks, but said Gambari also met with foreign diplomats, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a special panel overseeing the aid effort for victims of Cyclone Nargis.
One western diplomat, who spoke with Gambari, said the UN envoy's "mission aims notably to relaunch the dialogue between the opposition and the regime."
"Since Cyclone Nargis there have been many UN visitors, and Gambari noticed a real will on the part of the government to cooperate on humanitarian issues, and he wants to extend this cooperation to the political sphere," the diplomat told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
After the military's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks last September, the junta sought to ease international outrage at the bloodshed by appointing a liaison officer, labour minister Aung Kyi, to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi.
But the two have not met since January, when the democracy leader complained about the slow pace of their talks.
Gambari last visited Myanmar in March on a mission that UN officials later described as "disappointing," after the junta publicly rebuffed his calls for political reform and rejected his offer to send election monitors for a referendum that approved a new constitution in May.
The diplomat warned that Gambari would face a "difficult task" in winning any concessions from the regime, which feels emboldened by the referendum.
Officials would not give any details on Gambari's itinerary, but he was expected to travel Tuesday to the Irrawaddy Delta, home to most of the 2.4 million victims of Cyclone Nargis, which pounded the country in May and left 138,000 dead or missing.
On his last visit here, Gambari was allowed to meet twice with Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 19 years under house arrest.
Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party did not know if she would be allowed to see Gambari again.
But NLD spokesman Nyan Win (EDS: same name as foreign minister) said the 63-year-old Nobel peace prize winner had been allowed to see her lawyer and her personal physician on Sunday.
She spoke with her lawyer Kyi Win for more than four hours in their second encounter this month, the spokesman said.
He called the meetings "significant," noting that before this month she had not been allowed to see her lawyer since 2004.
The NLD has appealed the latest extension of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest, but has not received a response from the government. Nyan Win said he did not know whether Kyi Win had discussed the appeal with her.
Aung San Suu Kyi's latest detention began more than five years ago, and she has been allowed little contact with the outside world.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962. The NLD won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but the junta never allowed them to take office.
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