UN human rights envoy meets Myanmar's Suu Kyi
UN human rights envoy meets Myanmar's Suu Kyi
YANGON (Reuters): UN human rights envoy to Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, met Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday at the end of a landmark three-day visit to the military-ruled country.
Diplomats said the UN Special Rapporteur and three other UN officials called on the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner at her lakeside residence in central Yangon and had about 90 minutes of discussions with her.
Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), has been held under de facto house arrest since September with access to her strictly controlled.
The envoy, on the first visit by a senior UN human rights official to Myanmar for five years, was not immediately available for comment.
Pinheiro, a Brazilian who took over as UN special rapporteur on Myanmar after the resignation of his predecessor Rajsoomer Lallah in November, previously said he would comment on his findings from the trip only after he returned to Geneva.
He was due to leave Yangon for Bangkok later on Thursday and then travel back to Europe.
On Monday he met a powerful member of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, military intelligence chief Lt. Gen.Khin Nyunt, and Foreign Minister Win Aung.
The NLD won Myanmar's last general election in 1990 by a landslide but has never been allowed to govern. Suu Kyi was released from six years of house arrest in 1995.
But relations between the military and the pro-democracy opposition have improved in recent months with a series of meetings between Suu Kyi and senior generals.
Diplomats see Pinheiro's visit as a clear sign of rapprochement between the two sides.
Lallah, who resigned after four years in the job, was never allowed to visit Myanmar.
His last report, in October, accused the military government of torturing, raping and executing civilians, particularly members of ethnic minority groups. Autonomy-seeking minority guerrillas have been battling the government for decades.
The United States' annual report on global human rights, released in February, grouped Myanmar with Cuba and North Korea as the world's three worst countries for human rights abuses.
In Washington, a bipartisan group of 35 U.S. senators is urging President George W. Bush to maintain sanctions against Myanmar to encourage continued dialogue between the Southeast Asian nation's military government and the democratic opposition.
The senators said, in a letter to Bush, they are convinced that U.S. sanctions imposed in 1997 helped prompt the Myanmar government to open talks with pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"While it's too soon to determine if these talks will produce a plan for national reconciliation, we believe any change in sanctions pressure could remove the incentive for the regime to negotiate, said the letter, made public on Wednesday.
U.S. sanctions against Myanmar include the suspension of assistance programs, a ban on sales of military items, suspension of Myanmar's access to favorable tariff rates and opposition to multilateral lending.
The United States has also banned new U.S. investment in the country and has banned visas for senior Burmese officials.