UN aide to report on visit with Myanmar dissident

UNITED NATIONS, May 23 (Reuters) A top UN official will brief the Security Council next week, at Washington's request, on his recent meeting with detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, council members said.

The briefing by Ibrahim Gambari, the UN undersecretary-general for political affairs, would mark only the second time that military-ruled Myanmar has been the subject of a council briefing.

The first such briefing took place in December.

US Ambassador John Bolton called for a council briefing after Gambari met with Suu Kyi on Saturday -- her first contact with an outsider in three years. He reported afterward that she was well but still under restriction.

Gambari was the first senior U.N. official in two years to be allowed into the country formerly known as Burma, which has been under military control since 1962. ''She feels she has a contribution to make and I hope she will be allowed to make it,'' he told Reuters in Bangkok after his three-day visit.

China, Russia and Japan had in the past objected to bringing up Myanmar in the council, arguing its human rights record was an internal matter and it was not a threat to international peace and security.

But no country spoke against Bolton's request yesterday, while Britain, Denmark, France and Slovakia spoke in favor of it, diplomats attending the closed-door council session said.

Bolton said the United States was still weighing whether to follow up on the briefing by seeking council approval of a statement or resolution on Myanmar.

''We did not explicitly have any further measures contemplated, but we also did not foreclose the possibility of taking additional steps,'' he told reporters. ''We would wait and see how the briefing went.'' Allowing the briefing was a one-time action that fell short of putting Myanmar formally on the council's agenda, a step sought by a number of human rights groups to make future discussions easier.

''Some of the members are very sensitive about this matter,'' British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters. ''We'll take it step by step.'' Suu Kyi, a 60-year-old Nobel peace laureate, has been in prison or under house arrest since May 2003. Her National League for Democracy party won a 1990 landslide election victory that was ignored by the military junta.

Gambari in December told the council that the junta was jailing political dissidents, destroying ethnic minorities' villages and creating a food crisis.

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