UN envoy's meet with Myanmar junta chief delayed

Myanmar's leader stalled a UN envoy for yet another day on Monday, delaying until Tuesday his chance to present world demands for an end to the junta's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN special envoy who has been in Myanmar since Saturday, has finally been given an appointment to meet with Senior General Than Shwe on Tuesday in the junta's remote bunker-like capital, Naypyitaw, an Asian diplomat said.

Instead of the meeting that he had hoped for on Monday, Gambari was taken on a government-sponsored trip to attend a seminar in the far northern Shan state on EU's relations with Southeast Asia, said other diplomats.

The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

Gambari is expected to return to Yangon on Tuesday to catch a flight out of the country, the diplomats said.

In a two-line statement, the UN said Gambari ''remains in Myanmar. He looks forward to meeting Senior General Than Shwe and other relevant interlocutors before the conclusion of his mission.''

While the junta stalled Gambari, a show of force over the weekend in the country's main cities virtually snuffed out protests.

On Monday, the troops pulled back, removing road blocks and appearing to ease their stranglehold on Yangon, the country's biggest city.

Public anger, which ignited August 19 after the government hiked fuel prices, turned into mass protests against 45 years of military dictatorship when Buddhist monks joined in.

Crushing dissent

Soldiers responded last week by opening fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing at least 10 people by the government's account.

A Norway-based dissident news organization, the Democratic Voice of Burma, said pro-democracy activists estimate 138 people were killed.

''Our own estimate is about 6,000 people detained, not killed, but detained,'' including about 2,400 monks, said DVB chief editor Aye Chan Naing in Oslo.

He said they are being held in at least four places - the infamous Insein Prison, a pharmaceutical factory, a technical institute and a disused race course.

He said his reporters had spoken to one family whose son was wounded by gunfire in Yangon, brought to a hospital on September 28 and disappeared on September 30.

In Yangon, there was a clear sense that the anti-democracy protests had once again failed in the face of the junta's overwhelming military might, which was last used in 1988 to crush a much larger uprising.

''The people are angry but afraid - many are poor and struggling in life so they don't join the protests anymore,'' Thet, a 30-year-old university graduate who is now driving a taxi, said Monday.

''I think the protests are over because there is no hope pressing them,'' said a 68-year-old teacher.

In the afternoon, trucks full of police and soldiers arrived in downtown Yangon. Small vendors immediately packed up and left, while other stores hurriedly closed their windows, fearing trouble.

Some monks were allowed to leave monasteries to collect food donations, watched by soldiers lounging under trees.

Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the two main flash points of unrest, were also reopened, but there were few visitors.

Monks appeared to be paying a heavy price for their role in spearheading the demonstrations.

Another Asian diplomat said on Monday that all the arrested monks were defrocked - stripped of their highly revered status and made to wear civilian clothes.

Some of them are likely to face long jail terms, the diplomat said, also on condition of anonymity.

In Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city, security forces arrested dozens of university students who staged a street protest on Sunday, a witness said.