UN envoy presses Myanmar on political prisoners

YANGON, Nov 9 (Reuters) A UN envoy began a four-day visit to Myanmar, which will include a rare meeting with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, by pressing the military junta over the release of political prisoners.

Ibrahim Gambari saw the Nobel Peace laureate during his last visit in May and was scheduled to meet Suu Kyi on Saturday in Yangon, where she is confined to her lakeside villa without a telephone and allowed few visitors by the military.

Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) which won 1990 elections only for the military to ignore the result, has been under house arrest for more than 10 of the last 17 years.

The Nigerian envoy was also due to meet junta supremo Senior General Than Shwe in the regime's new jungle capital, Nay Pyi Taw, on Saturday.

After talks with Foreign Minister Nyan Win and other ministers on Thursday, Gambari issued a statement saying he had urged ''concrete positive results'' on four issues.

''The need to make the roadmap political process more transparent and inclusive, the release of political prisoners, the question of humanitarian access and the situation in the Kayin State,'' the statement said.

There was no official comment from the government.

Gambari is expected to get a first-hand look at the constitution-drafting National Convention tomorrow, the first stage in the junta's seven -step roadmap to democracy announced in 2003.

The NLD is boycotting the Convention while Suu Kyi remains in detention. The West calls it a sham because it has no timetable and they say it will entrench military rule which began in 1962.

ACTIVISTS DETAINED Gambari became the first foreigner to see Suu Kyi in more than two years when he was allowed to hold an hour-long meeting with her at a Yangon guest house in May.

The contact, a week before Suu Kyi's house arrest was due to expire, led to optimism that the generals in charge of the former Burma might be about to release her.

However, they extended her detention by another year despite a direct appeal from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Activists in Myanmar have urged Gambari to press for the release of five former leaders of a 1988 pro-democracy uprising detained in late September.

The five are accused of accepting help from exiled groups to destabilise Myanmar but the government has yet to lay formal charges against them. The United Nations estimates there are more than 1,000 political prisoners in Myanmar.

Among other issues raised by Gambari was a government offensive against what Yangon has called rebel-held villages in Kayin, or Karen, state bordering Thailand.

Human rights groups say thousands of ethnic Karen have been displaced as a result of the offensive.

REUTERS AB RN2255