By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 10 2008 (IPS)

United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari’s third visit to Burma has ended in failure, an outcome expected after he was informed on arrival that the junta was in no mood to change its political battle plans.

By all accounts Gambari had a rough time between his arrival in Burma on Thursday and departure on Monday.

Leading the attack on Gambari was Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan, who met the Nigerian diplomat the day after he flew into Rangoon, the former capital. It is ‘’impossible’’ to amend the new draft constitution, Gambari was told Friday of the charter that had been shaped by a body handpicked by the generals.

The prospect of a meaningful dialogue between the junta and the currently detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who heads the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was quashed, likewise. Kyaw San accused the Nobel Peace laureate of being the stumbling block, saying that the country’s leader, Senior General Than Shwe, would meet her if she gave up her ‘’confrontational attitude,’’ including her continued call for sanctions against the junta.

But Kyaw San had more verbal bullets in store, with Gambari as the target, too. He accused the envoy of taking sides, being partial to Suu Kyi’s cause and taking a ‘’Western’’ view, and warned that Gambari’s neutral role as an ‘’adviser’’ would be challenged.

Such a stance by the rulers of Burma, also called Myanmar, is the toughest since Gambari began his mission following a bloody crackdown last September of tens of thousands of peaceful, unarmed street protests led by Buddhist monks. The first visit followed an international outcry, prompting Burmese strongman Than Shwe to meet the envoy. On the second visit, the junta gave assurances that suggested the spirit of compromise was in the air.

It was a view echoed by a London-based group championing for political freedom and human rights in the South-east Asian country. ‘’It is clear that the Burmese junta does not respect U.N. envoys,’’ Mark Farmaner, director of the Burma Campaign in Britain, said in a statement released Monday. ‘’It is time the U.N. tried a new approach. The Secretary-General himself should lead the U.N. effort, and he should have the backing of a binding Security Council resolution.’’

Gambari’s third mission came shortly after the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, raised the political stakes in the country. It revealed plans to conduct a referendum in May to seek approval for Burma’s third constitution. Plans were also announced for a general election to follow in 2010, for which the widely popular Suu Kyi has been banned from participating.

Burma has been ruled by successive military dictators since 1962, when the army grabbed power following a coup. In 1990, following a pro-democracy uprising, which was brutally crushed, the country held general elections. The winner, on that occasion was the NLD, securing a thumping majority. But the junta refused to respect the verdict of that poll, subsequently mounting a repressive campaign that targeted all political opponents.

The U.N. entered the fray soon after, hoping to address the widespread human rights violations in the country and to help engineer political reform, with a functioning democracy as a goal. Since 1992, the country has had three U.N. human rights envoys and three special political envoys, the latest of whom is Gambari. But none of them could stem the flow of oppression.

Consequently, the junta’s appears set to unveil its ‘’developed discipline-flourishing democratic state’’ as part of its seven-step roadmap toward political reform, where the generals are to gain legal power through a constitution to dominate the future political landscape.

Such a prospect, and the strident tone of the junta to install its political programme, is giving rise to a view that the generals have got the blessings of the Chinese government, a key supporter of the SPDC. ‘’We think that China is backing the SPDC from behind. Without China’s support, the SPDC will not dare confront the world body as it did during Mr. Gambari’s visit,’’ says Zin Linn, a spokesman for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, the democratically-elected Burmese government in exile.

‘’The junta is now feeling confident that it can get away with its game and not come under pressure at the U.N.,’’ he added during an interview. ‘’China needs Burma because of its many natural resources, like gas.’’

But such a defeat of the U.N’s efforts at the hands of a military dictatorship will bode ill for the oppressed peoples of the world, says Myint Wai, deputy director of the Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma, a Bangkok-based non-governmental organisation. ‘’Other oppressive regimes will also use this example and not take the U.N. seriously.’’

‘’We cannot let the dignity of the U.N. be damaged,’’ he told IPS. ‘’The entire world will stand to lose, then.’’

Excerpt: