Mon Oct 1, 12:23 AM ET

YANGON - U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari was waiting to see Myanmar junta chief Than Shwe on Monday in pursuit of his mission to end a bloody crackdown against 45 years of military rule, diplomats said.

Theories varied widely on why Gambari, dispatched after the junta sent in the troops to end mass protests last week, had not met Than Shwe despite having talks with detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

Than Shwe, 74 and frequently rumored to be in poor health, may be sick, playing hard to get, or even demonstrating his contempt for international opinion, diplomats said.

"We were all caught by surprise," one said after Gambari left the junta's new capital of Naypyidaw, 240 miles north of Yangon, on Sunday without meeting Than Shwe, whose government rarely heeds pressure from the outside.

Gambari then flew to Yangon to see Suu Kyi, who has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under some form of detention, before returning to Naypyidaw, a half-finished capital city carved out of the jungle.

British ambassador to Myanmar Mark Canning said China was pushing hard for Gambari's mission to be as long and as far-reaching as possible, and the fact he had gone back Naypyidaw might be the seed of some sort of shuttle diplomacy.

"There's been an evolution in his program. The initial pitch was minimalist. It's got a bit better, and we want to see it get better still," Canning told Reuters.

"We want to see a genuine shuttling around start, and we want to see the establishment of some sort of mechanism which allows the two parties to get together on an on-going basis."

DETERMINED TO MEET JUNTA LEADER

The United Nations made clear on Sunday Gambari did not plan to leave Myanmar, where the junta has flooded major cities with soldiers and police and barricaded off central Yangon where mass protests were held, without seeing Than Shwe.

"He looks forward to meeting Senior General Than Shwe, Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council, before the conclusion of his mission," a U.N. statement said.

Diplomats said Gambari met Suu Kyi for more than an hour at a Yangon government guest house near the lakeside villa where she is confined without a telephone and requires official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.

Earlier, in Naypyidaw, Gambari held talks with acting Prime Minister Thein Sein, who ranks fourth in the junta hierarchy, Culture Minister Khin Aung Nyint and Information Minister Kyaw Hsan.

It was not known if he had made any progress towards ending the crackdown on the biggest anti-junta protests for nearly 20 years, in which hundreds of Buddhist monks have been held.

Security forces have snuffed out protests in Yangon by sealing off two pagodas at their heart and keeping away the monks who led them, raiding monasteries and hauling monks away in trucks or penning them up inside.

There were soldiers at most street corners and security men

searched bags and people for cameras. The Internet, through which thousands of images of the crackdown have reached the world, remained off line.

The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said at least 700 monks and 500 other people had been arrested countrywide.

The protests began with small marches against fuel price rises in mid-August and intensified when soldiers fired over the heads of protesting monks, causing monasteries to mobilize.

The heavy-handed suppression even prompted criticism from China, the closest the junta has to an ally, and condemnation from the Association of South East Asian Nation, of which Myanmar is a member.

JAPANESE ENVOY

The generals habitually ignore outside pressure, but bowed to the international outcry to admit Gambari, a former Nigerian foreign minister, at short notice.

The government has acknowledged that 10 people were killed on Wednesday, the first day of the crackdown, although Western governments say the real toll is almost certainly higher.

A Japanese video journalist, Kenji Nagai, 50, was shot dead when troops opened fire on a crowd of chanting protesters and a Japanese envoy has arrived to ensure a full investigation into his death.

Footage appeared to show a soldier shooting him at point-blank range as security forces cleared protesters from central Yangon.

Myanmar's state-run media have proclaimed the restoration of peace and stability after security forces handled the protests "with care, using the least possible force."

The junta showed no signs on Monday that it was in a mood to make concessions to the opposition.

"Skyful of liars attempting to destroy the nation," ran one headline in state-run newspapers which also warned people not to believe anything reported on Burmese-language broadcasts on foreign radio stations.

"Beware, don't be bought," they said.

Mon Oct 1, 12:14 AM ET

YANGON - UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari has returned to Myanmar's capital in hopes of meeting reclusive junta chief Than Shwe to broker an end to a crackdown on dissent, an official said Monday.

Gambari met with Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for more than an hour on Sunday before flying to the administrative capital Naypyidaw in central Myanmar, a UN official said.

He also visited the remote city on Saturday for talks with senior leaders to convey worldwide outrage over the violence used to put down the biggest anti-government protests seen in nearly 20 years.

Gambari was dispatched by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to intervene after the regime unleashed a military campaign to stop anti-government demonstrations several days ago, leaving at least 13 dead and hundreds arrested.

The four-day crackdown, which saw live rounds, baton charges and tear gas used against monks, protesters and civilians alike, succeeded in largely stopping the demonstrations.

In Yangon, residents on Monday were trying to get their lives back on track despite heavy security around the city.

Most schools and shops reopened for the first time since the crackdown began on Wednesday, as commuter buses returned to streets that had been blocked by barbed wire and armed soldiers.

Security forces also began allowing Buddhist faithful to enter the sacred Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, two key rallying points for the protests which had been completely sealed off for the last five days.

The military, which has ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for 45 years, is under enormous international pressure after scenes of violence shocked the world.

In addition to Gambari's visit, Japan's Deputy Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka also arrived in Yangon on Sunday to probe the killing of a Japanese journalist by troops during a pro-democracy protest Thursday.

The body of video journalist Kenji Nagai bore signs that he was shot at point-blank range and died almost instantly, according to his employer, who saw his remains in hospital.

Japan is one of Myanmar's leading donors, and Yabunaka was expected to demand to meet top junta officials in Naypyidaw as well as with Aung San Suu Kyi.

Although the 62-year-old democracy leader has been effectively silenced by the regime, she has again captured the international spotlight amid the pro-democracy protests.

In dramatic scenes a week ago, the opposition leader stepped out of her home in tears to greet Buddhist monks who marched past the house where she has been confined for most of the past 18 years.

The protests first erupted in August after a massive hike in fuel prices, but escalated two weeks ago with the emergence of the Buddhist monks on the front line and drew up to 100,000 people onto the streets last week.

Sun Sep 30, 11:13 PM ET

YANGON, Myanmar - A U.N. envoy was unable to meet with Myanmar's top two junta leaders in his effort to persuade them to ease a violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, but was allowed a highly orchestrated session Sunday with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The military government, meanwhile, flooded the main city of Yangon with troops, swelling their numbers to about 20,000 by Sunday and ensuring that almost all demonstrators would remain off the streets, a diplomat said.

Scores of people also were arrested overnight, further weakening the flagging uprising against 45 years of military dictatorship. The protests began Aug. 19 when the government sharply raised fuel prices, then mushroomed into the junta's largest challenge in decades when Myanmar's revered monks took a leading role.

One protest was reported Sunday in the western state of Rakhine where more than 800 people marched in the town of Taunggok, shouting "Release all political prisoners!" Police, soldiers and junta supporters blocked the road, forcing them to disperse, a local resident said.

Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.'s special envoy to Myanmar, was sent to the country to try to persuade the notoriously unyielding military junta to halt its crackdown. Soldiers have shot and killed protesters, ransacked Buddhist monasteries, beaten monks and dissidents and arrested an estimated 1,000 people in the last week alone.

But it was not clear what, if anything, Gambari could accomplish. The junta has rebuffed scores of previous U.N. attempts at promoting democracy and Gambari himself spoke in person to Suu Kyi nearly a year ago with nothing to show for it.

Gambari began Sunday by meeting with the acting prime minister, the deputy foreign minister and the ministers of information and culture in Myanmar's new bunker-like capital of Naypyitaw, 240 miles north of Yangon. The meeting, however, did not include the junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, or his deputy, Gen. Maung Aye, the two key figures whom Gambari had been pushing to speak with before his arrival.

He was then unexpectedly flown back to the main city of Yangon and whisked to the State Guest House. Suu Kyi was briefly freed from house detention and brought over to speak with him for more than an hour, according to U.N. officials.

Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace prize winner who has come to symbolize the struggle for democracy in Myanmar, has spent nearly 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Gambari flew back to remote Naypyitaw late Sunday in hopes of a possible third meeting on Monday, an Asian diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

U.N. officials would not comment on speculation that he was carrying a letter from Suu Kyi to the junta but issued a statement that Gambari still hoped to speak with the junta's top leaders before leaving Myanmar.

The junta did not comment on Sunday's talks.

"I view this is very positive," said a second Asian diplomat who requested anonymity, citing protocol. "Hopefully, the shuttle diplomacy will bring some positive solutions to the present crisis as to the process of national reconciliation."

Suu Kyi's own party was not as optimistic. National League for Democracy secretary U Lwin told Radio Free Asia that he expects little progress from the talks because he sees Gambari as little more than a "facilitator" who can bring messages back and forth but has no authority to reach a lasting agreement.

Many see China, Myanmar's biggest trading partner, as the most likely outside catalyst. But China, India and Russia, who have been competing for Myanmar's bountiful oil and gas resources, do not seem prepared to go beyond words in dealing with the junta.

Japan, Myanmar's largest aid donor, said it is mulling sanctions or other actions to protest the junta's crackdown, which left a Japanese journalist dead, chief Cabinet spokesman Nobutaka Machimura said Monday.

Britain's ambassador Mark Canning said Gambari should stay in Myanmar "long enough to get under way a genuine process of national reconciliation."

"He should be given as much time as that takes. That will require access to senior levels of government as well as a range of political actors," Canning told The Associated Press.

The protests drew international attention after thousands of Buddhist monks joined people in venting anger at decades of brutal military rule. Some 70,000 people took to the streets before the protests were crushed Wednesday and Thursday when government troops opened fire into the crowds and raided monasteries to beat and arrest monks.

The government says 10 people were killed in last week's violence but independent sources say the number is far higher.

Truckloads of armed soldiers on Sunday patrolled downtown Yangon near recent protest sites and along the city's major streets. A nearby public market and a Catholic church were also teeming with soldiers.

The atmosphere in the city was intimidating but not always menacing. One witness said soldiers sat inside trucks and on sidewalks chatting, munched snacks or walked around looking bored.

Still, a video shot Sunday by a dissident group, the Democratic Voice of Burma, showed a monk, covered in bruises, floating face down in a Yangon river. It was not clear how long the body had been there.

People suspected of organizing this week's rallies continue to be arrested, a third Asian diplomat said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. The diplomat estimated the total number of arrests could be as high as 1,000, including several prominent members of the NLD. Myanmar's official press Monday said 11 people, including five young university students, were arrested for taking parts in two separate demonstrations in downtown Yangon Saturday.

Those joined an estimated 1,100 other political detainees already languishing in Myanmar's jails.

On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI joined world leaders in expressing serious concern about the situation in Myanmar. About 1 percent of the country's 54 million people are Catholics.

"I am following with great trepidation the very serious events," the pontiff said during an appearance at his summer residence near Rome. "I want to express my spiritual closeness to the dear population in this moment of the very painful trial it is going through."

The Catholic Church has ordered its clergy not to take part in demonstrations or political activities in Myanmar. Worshippers at Yangon's Catholic churches Sunday read posted bulletins from its hierarchy stating that priests, brothers and nuns were not to become involved in the demonstrations, but that lay Catholics could act as they saw fit.

Sun Sep 30, 10:30 PM ET

MAE LA REFUGEE CAMP, Thailand - In this refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border, huts are so tightly packed that chickens leap with ease between the thatched mud-and-leaf roofs.

The tiny homes can shelter up to three families of refugees who have fled fighting between Myanmar's army and ethnic rebel militias, and who face little hope of ever returning home or even leaving the crammed Mae La Camp.

Dirt roads teeming with ragged children are barely wide enough for the off-road trucks that ferry humanitarian aid through the settlement, which is home to nearly 50,000 people, mostly from Myanmar's Karen ethnic minority.

Thailand's Ministry of Interior, which runs the camps, has accepted few new refugees here for at least a year, but as Myanmar's junta cracks down on protests in Yangon, there are fears that a fresh wave of asylum-seekers could flood the border area.

"The people inside Burma, if they come inside the camp, we have to welcome them," Lin Leh Soe, who works with the Karen Women's Organisation, said, using Myanmar's former name.

Refugees from Myanmar began coming to Thailand in 1984 as the junta advanced into Karen state, and now there are about 155,000 refugees crowded in nine camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

Groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented a catalogue of abuses by Myanmar's military against civilians in Karen state, including forced labour, murder and the destruction of crops.

"They burn down the rice and they burn down the fields," said Mahn Shah, a member of the Karen National Union, an armed group battling the junta.

"Civilians lose their food, their property, they can't stay any longer, so they come to the border."

Naw Palay Wak spent a month traversing mountains with her parents and brothers to reach Thailand after troops from the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as Myanmar's junta is known, came to her village two years ago.

"When the SPDC military came to my village, if they saw women, they raped them, and they called the people in the village to be porters," she told AFP. "My mother was raped. We could not stay in my village."

The 20-year-old was in her first year studying law at Taungoo University when her family fled, but now her main task is taking care of her younger siblings.

"I did not want to throw my education away," she says. "I would like to improve my life, but I can't go to school."

Many of the social ills in Mae La such as alcoholism, domestic violence and drug abuse stem from the hopelessness that afflicts the refugees, said Sally Thompson, of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, which provides aid to camp.

"They don't have a choice, they are not able to decide what they do. At the moment they are not allowed to work, so they leave school, and then what do they do? They've got no hope, no opportunity," she told AFP by phone.

Thompson estimates that about 500 to 600 asylum seekers arrive from Myanmar each month.

Prospects for the refugees to return home remain bleak, she said, and one solution would be for the Thai government to allow them to work legally in the kingdom, a scenario currently being hammered out.

Since 2005, about 16,250 refugees have also been resettled abroad, mostly in the United States, thus all but giving up hope of ever returning to Myanmar.

People working in the camps say it is difficult to predict if the crackdown in Yangon will send a new wave across the border, and are divided over the ability to house any new arrivals.

"If there was an influx, the Thai government would probably accommodate them," says Eldon Hager, the resettlement officer for the United Nation's refugee agency office in Mae Sot.

Others are not optimistic about the government taking so kindly to a flood of persecuted Myanmar nationals, especially when Mae La already has up to 6,000 unregistered residents who officially have no access to aid.

"That's been the policy of the MoI (Ministry of Interior) -- starve the new arrivals out," says one aid worker who asked not to be named.

Security at the camp has been tightened since the Myanmar junta unleashed bullets and tear gas last week, killing at least 13 on the streets of Yangon.

A small protest was rumoured to have broken out at the camp football field, while foreign missionaries are afraid to leave their schools inside the camp in case they will not be able to get back in through the military check-points.

And while many may be making treacherous journeys to try and reach Thailand, those who live in Mae La think about escaping.

After stoically describing her mother's rape and her flight from Myanmar, Naw Palay Wak finally breaks down in tears when speaking about her future.

She has applied for resettlement in the United States and Australia, but has heard nothing.

"I only want to get the education that I can't get now," she says.

Sun Sep 30, 6:22 PM ET

MAE SOT, Thailand - The rows of children transfixed by cartoons in a wooden shelter near the Thai-Myanmar border are probably too young to understand why they are all now wearing matching rust-red clothes.

On the wall is a map of their homeland Myanmar, where the ruling junta this week cracked down on anti-government protests and killed at least three Buddhist monks, whose deep red robes the kids are unconsciously honouring.

The four and five-year-olds are probably also too young to fully understand why their parents left their impoverished country, formerly known as Burma, or what forced their mothers and fathers to finally abandon them in Thailand.

"A lot of Burmese people are working here," said Thant Zin Kyaw, deputy director of local assistance group Social Action for Women (SAW), which runs the safehouse for abandoned children.

"They come here for different reasons. Some are facing serious crisis in Burma like forced labour, economic crisis, child labour."

Resource-rich Myanmar was once one of the most economically promising countries in Southeast Asia, but 45 years of military rule have run infrastructure into the ground.

Myanmar is now one of the world's poorest countries with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) well below that of nearby Cambodia, Laos and Bangladesh. UN figures show the junta spends just 0.5 percent of GDP on health.

Seeking a better life for their families, many people from Myanmar illegally cross the porous border to Thailand, but once here they lack access to all social services, and are open to exploitation by employers.

Migrant workers may give up their children because the parents are HIV positive or the child is disabled and they cannot afford to look after them.

Some are not allowed to take the time off work to look after an infant, said Thant Zin Kyaw, as toddlers dressed by the staff in red ambled around a playhouse nearby.

Four-year-old Su Su Aung, who has cerebral palsy, will soon be joining the 32 abandoned children who are living at SAW's safehouse, even though it is already over its capacity of 25.

Currently he lies alone under a mosquito net on the floor of the Mae Tao Clinic, one of the few medical centres in Mae Sot where migrant workers and people coming across from Myanmar can get free health care.

Su Su Aung's parents crossed the border a few months ago and came to the clinic. His mother was treated for malaria, but died when she returned home.

His father soon brought Su Su Aung back and he became one of 10 abandoned children the clinic has treated since 2006. Staff say the man was probably unable to care for a disabled child alone.

Just a few feet away from Su Su Aung lies another infant, now four months old. She was abandoned at the clinic by her migrant worker parents when she was just 13 days old.

"People have no money to look after another child ... Most of the time, (the parents) wait for the staff to be busy, and they run away," said Eh Moolah, a senior medic in Mae Tao Clinic's reproductive health department.

"They say 'I need to go to the toilet, take my baby', and then they run."

The clinic's founder Cynthia Maung says the decision to abandon a baby is a final act of desperation that stems from a lack of access to services as basic as family planning advice.

Humanitarian organisations estimate that there are up to two million illegal Myanmar migrants working all over Thailand.

Although there are humanitarian organisations and clinics such as Mae Tao, which is funded by foreign donors, to help the migrant workers, many are unaware of their services, and fall through the cracks.

Some first-time migrant mothers are so desperate to get help delivering their babies that they will commit a small crime to go to Thai prison, where they receive basic health care, Cynthia Maung tells AFP.

Mae Tao Clinic also treats many migrant and Myanmar women who suffer side effects after illegal abortions, which many undergo because they simply cannot afford to feed another mouth.

Economic ills and the soaring costs of living were key reasons for recent anti-junta rallies in Yangon, and people often risk an illegal border crossing because they are too poor to afford even the paltry health care on offer in Myanmar.

It was poverty that forced San Thaw Dar, now 17, to come from Myanmar's Karen State to Thailand with her mother when she was 11 years old.

She was immediately put to work as a domestic helper, but accidently smashed a doll belonging to her employers, who demanded 5,000 baht (142 dollars). Instead of paying the fee, her mother dropped San Thaw Dar off at the SAW safehouse and left.

Surprisingly, San Thaw Dar does not feel any bitterness towards her mother, but thinks about her homeland, especially as she is not a legal Thai citizen.

"I would like to go back to Myanmar, but it depends on the situation," she said, as the younger residents scrambled over her, as yet in happy ignorance of life as a stateless person.

Sun Sep 30, 2:49 PM ET

A look at the insular military leadership behind the recent crackdown in Myanmar:


HOW DID THEY COME TO POWER?

The State Peace and Development Council, as Myanmar's ruling junta is formally known, replaced another dictatorship in 1988 after suppressing a pro-democracy uprising.

WHO ARE THEY?

There are 12 members on the council, but first among equals is Senior Gen. Than Shwe, 74, an uncompromising hard-liner. No. 2 is Deputy Senior Gen. Maung Aye, 69, known for his ruthless suppression of Myanmar's ethnic rebels.

HOW DO THEY STAY IN POWER?

Myanmar has a 400,000-man military, one of the largest in Asia. Soldiers live in isolated barracks, secluded from civilian life; their families are provided with housing as well.

WHERE DO THEY GET REVENUES?

Than Shwe's government has opened up the country to foreign investment. Myanmar is rich in natural resources, including potentially vast oil and gas reserves.

WHO ARE THEIR ALLIES?

China is the regime's main ally as well as its main trading partner. Both China and India curry favor with the junta because of Myanmar's strategic location on the Indian Ocean and its oil and natural gas resources.

WHO ARE THEIR CRITICS?

The United States, the European Union and other Western nations have slapped economic sanctions on the regime and urged it to embrace a peaceful, democratic transition. Rights groups have sharply criticized its human rights record.

Sun Sep 30, 2:06 PM ET

BANGKOK, Thailand - Hunkered down in their war rooms hundreds of miles from mass protests, the aging, hard-line generals in Myanmar are known as a suspicious lot who view the West with disdain and depend on browbeaten advisers and astrologers to guide them.

Much like Myanmar's former kings, they see themselves as the only ones capable of ruling, and their army as the only force that can transform the country into a modern state.

Anyone questioning their 45 years of supremacy, whether a lone protester or tens of thousands on the streets of Yangon, is simply seen as a threat and dealt with the same brute force.

"They are moving to put down what they consider a threat to the nation," said Mary Callahan, a Myanmar expert at the University of Washington. "I think these senior officers really believe they have done right by their country and the protesters are threatening the stability of the country and threatening what they consider the progress they brought."

The demonstrations are the stiffest challenge to the ruling junta in two decades, a crisis that began Aug. 19 with protests over a fuel price hike then expanded dramatically about two weeks ago when Buddhist monks joined the protests.

Since Wednesday, soldiers and riot police have clubbed, shot and detained demonstrators in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, the largest city in what used to be called Burma. At least 10 people were killed, dozens injured and hundreds detained, including Buddhist monks whose monasteries were shot up and destroyed in overnight raids by security forces.

The heavy-handed response, analysts said, was not surprising given the junta's long history of snuffing out all dissent since the country's independence in 1948. For decades, they have also waged a brutal war against ethnic groups in which soldiers have razed villages, raped women and killed innocent civilians — atrocities that continue to this day.

Since the 1980s, they have detained and tortured thousands of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.

When hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets peacefully in 1988, the military opened fire, killing as many as 3,000.

The generals' problem, said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand, is that "They don't listen to their own population. They honestly think they are the only ones capable of doing this."

Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who launched his military career fighting ethnic insurgencies, embodies the regime he heads. In the top leadership post since 1992, he is regularly on the front pages of state media in his drab military uniform.

"He commands loyalty. He seems like the archetypal soldier," said Razali Ismail, a former U.N. special envoy to Myanmar who has met Than Shwe numerous times. "He believes himself to be very much a patriot, a nationalist. He speaks often about the sacrifices that he and his generation and his soldiers have made."

Described by Western diplomats who have met him as humorless, stiff and xenophobic, Than Shwe rarely says anything in public except at the annual Armed Forces Day — an ostentatious display featuring as many as 15,000 troops and the latest military hardware from China, India and Russia.

This year, the 74-year-old general used the occasion to warn that the nation still faces danger from "powerful countries" that are trying to weaken the military.

"They will try to sow the seeds of discord and dissension not only among national races but also within each particular ethnic group in various spheres such as religion, ideologies, social classes," he said.

In recent years, as his health has declined, Than Shwe's behavior has become increasingly bizarre, diplomats and analyst said. Almost overnight, he moved the capital in 2005 to an isolated jungle outpost 250 miles north of Yangon and named it Naypyitaw or "Royal City."

To mark his first Armed Forces Day there, he built gigantic statues of former Burmese kings, a Western diplomat recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He has regal pretensions."

These days, Thang Shwe's declining health has forced him to remain mostly in Naypyitaw where he depends on cowed junior officers and even his astrologer for guidance, Myanmar analyst Larry Jagan and others said.

One of his few trips outside the capital was to his daughter's wedding last year in Yangon, which angered many Burmese because it cost $300,000 and the couple received wedding gifts worth $50 million, according to Irrawaddy, a respected online magazine covering Burmese affairs.

A video of the wedding can be found on YouTube.

The junta claims credit for modernizing Myanmar. It has doubled the size of the army to 400,000 and opened the isolated, impoverished country of 54 million people to foreign investment. It also ended fighting with several ethnic groups and built scores of new roads, bridges, pagodas and schools.

But its aggressive push to develop the country was not matched by progress in the political arena. Fearful of another 1988 uprising, it responded to its loss of the 1990 elections by refusing to hand over power and imprisoning Suu Kyi.

History suggests the military will stay united, despite unconfirmed rumors in Yangon of a few soldiers refusing to fire on crowds last week or turning on one another. Soldiers have plenty of incentives to remain loyal — they and their families get better food, housing, health care and other benefits than ordinary Burmese.

"The military leadership may have disagreements and personality conflicts but those have never erupted into anything politically significant because they realized they are all better off sticking together," Callahan said.

Sun Sep 30, 7:19 AM ET

OSLO - Using secret material smuggled out of Myanmar, the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma's radio and TV stations are a key source of information for those inside and outside the country on the government's crackdown on protesters.

As demonstrators clash with troops in a nation with no independent media, exiled journalists and workers broadcasting from a sleek office in the Norwegian capital hope their work will help end military rule in their homeland.

Undercover local journalists secretly film and record events, risking arrest and torture to send footage and facts to the station. Material is smuggled out by airline passengers or diplomats, or sent by e-mail.

As protests grew last week, the station found itself providing film to the world's broadcasters largely unable to get their own material from inside Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

"Our station is a key factor in making a change," Khin Maung Win, a 42-year-old veteran of 1988 protests which ended in bloodshed with a military crackdown, told Reuters.

"In 1988, Burma was a completely closed country. There was no media coverage. Now everyone is watching."

With about a dozen from its staff of 100 in Oslo, the newsroom is alive with discussion about events half a world away. "Never report rumors" says a sign on the wall alongside a painting of democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Democratic Voice of Burma broadcasts by shortwave radio. It also beams satellite television for several hours a day.

Funded by the governments of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the United States and the Netherlands, the broadcaster has increased its output and most staff have almost doubled their hours since protests led by Buddhist monks began earlier this month.

TUNING IN

Myanmar's government last week blocked Internet access but people in Myanmar continued to talk to the station by mobile phone, Win said.

Before the protests, the station estimated its radio programs reached about 13 million of Myanmar's 56 million people and its satellite television about half of the estimated 10 million viewers in the country.

"Nowadays, we think everyone is tuning in," he said. "People are watching and listening publicly. People are proud when their voices are heard on the air -- they would never have that chance with state media."

Mobile and satellite phone calls are its main expense, Win said, adding that last week alone the station spent its usual annual total of nearly $100,000 on communications. Governments that support the radio have pledged more funds.

Working for the station is a crime in Myanmar, and the staff worry about the safety of their workers and family members. Some staff in Oslo avoid communication with families back home for fear of endangering them.

The broadcaster also sees a role for itself in a free Myanmar. "In the past we were effectively propaganda for the pro-democracy movement," Win said. "Now, we try to be objective so we can become the independent media of a free Burma."

There is cause for optimism, Win says. The station reported that some army units refused to fire on protesters or monks -- signs of a potential split in the military, he said.

He said a transition would have to be gradual and he hoped a U.N. envoy visiting the country would be able to persuade the military rulers to allow a step-by-step transfer of power.

A sudden collapse of central rule could be disastrous, Win said. "There are so many ethnic groups in the country," he said. "There are many people with weapons but no education. It could become another Yugoslavia... or another Iraq."

Sun Sep 30, 5:37 AM ET

YANGON - UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari met Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday in the main city Yangon after he earlier held talks with junta leaders, a security official said.

"They held a meeting of about one hour and 15 minutes," the source told AFP after Gambari met the democracy icon at a government guest house in the city formerly called Rangoon, their first meeting since November 2006.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the 62-year-old head of the opposition National League for Democracy and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been under house arrest in Yangon for most of the past 18 years.

Gambari, a Nigerian-born diplomat, arrived in Yangon earlier Sunday after meetings in the secluded capital Naypyidaw, 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Yangon, with junta leaders, diplomats said.

Gambari arrived in Naypyidaw on Saturday for talks, in which he was expected to convey international outrage over the regime's violent crackdown on mass demonstrations that erupted two weeks ago.

"Gambari was in Naypyidaw yesterday where he met junta leaders, including reportedly Senior General Than Shwe," a Western diplomat in Yangon told AFP, referring to the junta's number one figure.

He said there was no information yet as to the content of their talks.

Sun Sep 30, 1:43 AM ET

TOKYO - Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka left for Myanmar Sunday to probe the killing of a Japanese journalist by troops during pro-democracy protests in Yangon.

The body of video journalist Kenji Nagai bore signs that he was shot at point-blank range and died almost instantly, according to his employer who saw his remains in hospital.

Japan, one of Myanmar's leading donors, will demand the military regime punish those responsible for the killing if it was found to be deliberate, Japanese media reported on Saturday.

Yabunaka was seeking to meet with Foreign Minister Nyan Win, Home Affairs Minister Maung Oo and other Myanmar leaders during his three-day visit to Yangon, the foreign ministry said.

"I will seek a full account of the incident and demand safety guarantees for Japanese nationals," Yabunaka told reporters at Tokyo's Narita airport. "I want to tell them to hold a dialogue with pro-democracy forces and pave the way for democracy."

Tokyo is considering such actions as recalling its ambassador and reducing or suspending technical assistance to the country, Kyodo News said.

Nagai, 50, covered trouble spots around the world for the Tokyo-based video news service APF News. He was he first foreigner killed in Myanmar's bloody crackdown on anti-government protests.

APF News president Toru Yamaji, 46, met on Saturday with a doctor who carried out a post mortem examination on the journalist, according to the company.

"Mr. Nagai was shot point-blank at about one metre (three feet) range and he was in an instant-death situation," Yamaji quoted the doctor as telling him, according to APF News staff in Tokyo.

"He was presumed to have been struck by a single bullet which entered his body from the left side of his back and pierced through the right chest breaking a few ribs," he said.

"I came fact to face with Mr. Nagai and the reality of his death sank in again. I stared into his face for some time before telling him, 'Let's call it a day and come home together,'" Yamaji was quoted as saying.

Japan in 2003 suspended low-interest loans for major projects, such as infrastructure, to protest against the continued detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

But Japan says aid continues for emergencies and humanitarian purposes.

Sun Sep 30, 1:28 AM ET

BANGKOK - Despite global outrage over Myanmar's bloody crackdown on dissent, multinational firms are still vying for the country's rich natural resources, throwing an economic lifeline to the military regime.

US energy giant Chevron, French oil group Total and China's top oil producer China National Petroleum Corporation are among companies giving much-needed income to Myanmar, defying activists' calls to pull out.

"All these profits go to the regime. These companies don't care about human rights and what is going on in Yangon," said Debbie Stothard, a coordinator of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Myanmar, a regional pro-democracy body.

Myanmar's junta has been condemned worldwide for launching an offensive against protesters in its main city Yangon, killing at least 13 people, including a Japanese journalist, and jailing hundreds more.

US President George W. Bush last week unveiled new sanctions on the country's ruling generals in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy also urged his country's businesses, including Total, to freeze their investments in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.

Total has a 31 percent stake in Myanmar's major Yadana project, which would carry gas from fields in the Andaman Sea to power plants in Thailand.

The project is jointly run by the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, Thailand's top oil exploration firm PTTEP, and US firm Unocal, which has been bought by Chevron. Chevron owns a 28-percent stake in the Yadana fields.

Japan's Nippon Oil Corp., South Korean's Daewoo International, Malaysia's state-run energy firm Petronas, as well as two Indian power giants, Gail India and Oil and Natural Gas Corp., are also jockeying for billion-dollar contracts.

Nippon Oil said there would be no change in its Myanmar operations following the bloody crackdown on demonstrations, which had steadily grown since August 19 following a massive hike in fuel prices for ordinary people.

"We see the political situation and energy business as separate matters," said a company spokesman in Tokyo. He declined to say how much Nippon Oil has invested in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

A spokesman for Daewoo, which recently discovered record gas reserves in Myanmar, declined to comment on the clampdown but said: "If South Korea decided to impose sanctions against Myanmar, we would have counterplans for that."

Apart from natural gas, global companies are also seeking Myanmar's teak, forest products, jade, gems, beans and textiles.

"China and Thailand are the major buyers of teak and jade. They just want short-term business interests. They don't care about the lives of Burmese people," said Aung Thu Nyein, a Thai-based Myanmar analyst.

Neighbouring Thailand is the biggest buyer of Myanmar's exports, and Thai firms have also heavily invested in the agriculture and tourism sectors in the military-run country.

Another big neighbour, India, is also flexing its economic muscle. Major state-run infrastructure firm RITES has committed to spending 130 million dollars to develop a port in Sittwe, 560 kilometres (350 miles) west of Yangon.

Indian telecom firm TCIL and pharmaceutical company Zydus Cadila are among Indian firms operating in Myanmar.

Russia, which has called the crackdown an "internal matter," also announced in May it would help build a nuclear research centre in Myanmar.

Aung Thu Nyein praised Bush's tough measures against the junta and urged the world to follow the lead of the United States, a vocal critic of Myanmar, in an effort to pressure the military government.

"The world must be united in terms of imposing sanctions against Burma. Otherwise, sanctions remain useless against the junta," he said.

The US has imposed sanctions due to Myanmar's human rights abuses, including the detention of 62-year-old pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past 18 years under house arrest in Yangon.

In the wake of Myanmar's crackdown, the US government ordered a freeze on the assets of junta leader General Than Shwe and 13 other senior officials.

Sun Sep 30, 1:24 AM ET

RYE, N.H. - Sen. John McCain said Saturday that the United States and Myanmar's neighbors need to be tougher on the military junta responsible for this week's brutal crackdown on demonstrators.

The Republican presidential hopeful said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations should be told to "kick these guys out."

"We should be putting every sanction on them that we can think of," said McCain. "We should have every place in the world talking about how this kind of thing doesn't work anymore."

McCain, speaking outside a supporter's oceanfront home, described his meeting 10 years ago with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for years. He called her the most impressive person he has ever met and noted that she refused to leave Myanmar to see her dying husband in England because she would have been banned from returning.

"She is a woman that's so remarkable, it's hard for me to describe to you," he said.

McCain said later that he was not trying to conjure up the more than five years he spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

McCain does highlight his war-hero biography in new ads being aired in New Hampshire that show him as a wounded Navy pilot answering questions from his prison bed and returning to the United States from Vietnam.

Such heavy advertising would not have been possible a few months ago, before McCain's broke campaign underwent major political, financial and organizational upheaval. A day before the end of the third financial quarter, McCain said he is satisfied with his fundraising levels.

The demonstrations in Myanmar, also known as Burma, began last month, sparked by anger over massive fuel price hikes. The government admits to 10 deaths in the crackdown that began Wednesday, though opposition groups say up to 200 people were killed.

President Bush has imposed sanctions on key leaders in the Myanmar regime. The Southeast Asian organization to which McCain referred issued its sharpest-ever condemnation of the regime, calling the crackdown "repulsive."

Sun Sep 30, 12:40 AM ET

YANGON, Myanmar - Die-hard protesters waved the peacock flag of the crushed pro-democracy movement on a solitary march Saturday through the eerily quiet streets of Myanmar's largest city, where many dissidents said they were resigned to defeat without international intervention.

Housewives and shop owners taunted troops but quickly disappeared into alleyways. According to diplomats briefed by witnesses, residents of three neighborhoods blocked soldiers from entering the monasteries in a crackdown on Buddhist monks, who led the largest in a month of demonstrations. The soldiers left threatening to return with reinforcements.

The top U.N. envoy on Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, arrived in the country but many protesters said they were nonetheless seeing a repeat of the global reaction to a 1988 pro-democracy uprising, when the world stood by as protesters were gunned down in the streets.

"Gambari is coming, but I don't think it will make much of a difference," said one hotel worker, who like other residents asked not to be named, fearing retaliation. "We have to find a solution ourselves."

On Sunday, a senior Japanese official headed for Myanmar to press the military government to move toward democracy and to protest the killing of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai during the crackdown on protesters. Deputy Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka was to arrive in Yangon by Sunday evening, according to a ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with policy.

Soldiers and police have been posted on almost all corners in the cities of Yangon and Mandalay. Shopping malls, grocery stores and public parks were closed and few people dared to venture out of their homes.

A young woman who took part in a massive demonstration in Yangon Thursday said she didn't think "we have any more hope to win." She was separated from her boyfriend when police broke up the protest by firing into crowds and has not seen him since.

"The monks are the ones who give us courage," she said. Most of the clerics are now besieged in their monasteries behind locked gates and barbed wire.

Gambari was taken immediately to Naypyitaw, the remote, bunker-like capital where the country's military leaders are based. The White House urged the junta to allow him to have access to Aung San Suu Kyi — the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is under house arrest — and ordinary Myanmar residents.

The demonstrations began last month as people angry over massive fuel price hikes took to the streets — then mushroomed into the tens of thousands after the monks began marching.

The junta, which has a long history of snuffing out dissent, started cracking down Wednesday, when the first of at least 10 deaths was reported, and then let loose on Thursday, shooting into a crowd of protesters and clubbing them with batons.

The crackdown triggered an unprecedented verbal flaying of Myanmar's generals from almost every corner of the world — even some criticism from No. 1 ally China.

But little else that might stay the junta's heavy hand is seen in the foreseeable future.

The United States, which exercises meager leverage, froze any assets that 14 Myanmar leaders may have in U.S. financial institutions and prohibited American citizens from doing business with them. The leaders, including Than Shwe, are believed to have few if any such connections.

The United Nations has compiled a lengthy record of failure in trying to broker reconciliation between the junta and Suu Kyi. Gambari's efforts have been stymied, while his predecessor, Razali Ismail, was snubbed or sometimes barred from entry by the State Peace and Development Council, as the ruling junta is formally known.

The United States, Japan and others have turned a hopeful eye on China — Myanmar's biggest trading partner — as the most likely outside catalyst for change.

But China, India and Russia do not seem prepared to go beyond words in their dealings with the junta, ruling out sanctions as they jostle for a chance to get at Myanmar's bountiful and largely untapped natural resources, especially its oil and gas.

"Unless and until Beijing, Delhi and Moscow stand in unison in pressuring the SPDC for change, little will change," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University.

Some Chinese academics and diplomats say the international community may be overestimating what Beijing can do.

"I actually don't think China can influence Burma at all except through diplomacy. China's influence is not at all decisive," said Peking University Southeast Asia expert Liang Yingming.

India has switched from a vocal opponent of the junta to one currying favor with the generals as it struggles to corner energy supplies for its own rapidly expanding economy.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, a 10-member bloc which includes Myanmar, also has given no indication that it is considering an expulsion or any other action.

As governments heap criticism on the junta, Myanmar and foreign activists continue to call for concrete, urgent action.

"The world cannot fail the people of Burma again," said the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exile group based in Washington. "Selfless sacrifices deserve more than words and lip-service. They want effective intervention before it is too late."

Sat Sep 29, 10:54 PM ET

YANGON - An urgent United Nations mission to bring Myanmar's ruling generals and their many foes to the peace table was shrouded in secrecy on Sunday with no word on progress from the country's new jungle capital.

Officials were unreachable in Naypyidaw, 240 miles to the north of Yangon which has been the centre of an uprising led by Buddhist monks. Since mid-week the junta has been squeezing the life out of the protests by arresting or confining monks and barricading off the city centre.

There was no word even on who U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari has met in Naypyidaw, the greenfield site where the junta moved the entire government apparatus at just a few hours notice in 2005, apparently because astrologers had defined the auspicious hour for the shift.

The generals, directing moves to throttle the protests in Yangon and other cities from Naypyidaw, usually ignore outside pressure. Yet they bowed to the chorus of international concern that followed soldiers shooting down peaceful protesters last week to allow Gambari in at short notice.

The heavy-handed suppression of the protests had prompted criticism even from China, the closest the junta have to an ally, and rare condemnation from ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations), of which Myanmar is a member.

State-run media have proclaimed the restoration of peace and stability, and insist that security forces handled the protests "with care, using the least possible force." Diplomats flown to Naypyidaw received similar assurances.

FEW ON STREETS

At their height last Monday and Tuesday the protests in central Yangon, formerly Rangoon, filled five city blocks. They are now reduced to a few hundred people taunting and cursing security forces, who have fenced off the protest area between two main pagodas, then vanishing into alleys when charged.

There is no sign now of the maroon-robed monks, the moral core of the deeply Buddhist nation, whose column stretched nearly a kilometer (more than half a mile) at the height of the protests against 45 years of military rule.

The monks were either arrested by the hundreds in overnight raids on their monasteries, or are penned in there by surrounding security forces who began a crackdown on Wednesday in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon.

Soldiers and police fire occasional warning shots, ensuring the city remains scared of a repeat of 1988, when the army put down an uprising killing an estimated 3,000 people.

But there have been no further reports of deaths in the protests, which began in August with small marches against shock fuel price rises. The official count is 10 killed. Western governments believe the real toll is much higher.

GAMBARI TO MEET SUU KYI

The United States said Gambari going virtually directly to Naypyidaw, whisked out of Yangon as soon as he arrived from Singapore on Saturday, was a reason to worry about his mission, which followed an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on Myanmar prompted by the bloody crackdown on protests.

"We have concerns that Mr. Gambari was swiftly moved from Rangoon to the new capital in the interior, far from population centers," White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in a statement.

He urged the junta to allow Gambari wide access to people, including religious leaders and detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Gambari was due to meet Suu Kyi, who has spent about 12 of the last 18 years in some form of detention, when he returned to Yangon.

The two met a year ago, the last time any senior foreign figure has seen the democracy icon, who has been confined to her lakeside Yangon villa without a telephone and requiring official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.

Since she was last detained in May 2003, some of her countrymen have been able to see her just once -- early in the monk-led protests when marchers were allowed through the barricades sealing off her street.

Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990 which the generals annulled, appeared at the gate of the house, riot police between her and the protesters.

There has been no explanation, and no repeat, of the incident.

However, in a sign any concessions to the protesters by the generals would be limited, state television is publicizing marches around the country condemning the Yangon protests and officials say there will be more during Gambari's visit.

Sat Sep 29, 12:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON - US First Lady Laura Bush Friday branded as "deplorable" and "horrifying" the Myanmar military regime's crackdown on demonstrators and expressed doubts about the official death toll in the violence.

"The deplorable acts of violence being perpetrated against Buddhist monks and peaceful Burmese demonstrators shame the military regime," Bush said in a statement.

"Tens of thousands of Burmese are turning to the streets to demand their freedom -- and the country's military dictatorship has countered with horrifying abuses. Non-violent demonstrations by Buddhist monks and nuns have been met with tear gas, smoke grenades, baton beatings, and automatic weapons," she said.

"The regime admits to killing 10 people, but unofficial reports suggest the number is much higher," she added, noting that the regime's shutdown of communication links has cut off the flow of reliable information from Myanmar.

She also demanded that UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari be allowed to meet with sequestered opposition figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi, and reiterated her husband President George W. Bush's call for nations closest to the regime like China "to support the aspirations of the Burmese people, and to join in condemning the junta's use of violence on its own people."

Sat Sep 29, 12:16 PM ET

Lech Walesa and Desmond Tutu speak of solidarity. Vaclav Havel hopes for another "Velvet Revolution." Wei Jingsheng warns of a bloody sequel to Tiananmen Square.

Some of the globe's most prominent former dissidents — acutely aware of what can go right and wrong when a repressed society attempts to shake off tyranny — see shades of their own past struggles in Myanmar's drama.

In interviews with The Associated Press and other media, they offered insight and advice to the Buddhist monks and pro-democracy protesters who have defied Myanmar's military government — and to the world leaders and ordinary people watching it all unfold.

"If there's not enough international pressure, and China offers support in the background, then there will very likely be in Myanmar something like Tiananmen Square: a big massacre," Wei, China's best-known ex-dissident, told the AP in a phone interview from the U.S., where he lives in exile.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in 1989 when the Chinese army cleared the Beijing square of pro-democracy protests.

Wei, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for challenging the communist monopoly on power, called for more international pressure on Myanmar's ruling junta and on China for its perceived backing of the regime.

Walesa, who founded Poland's pro-democracy Solidarity movement and became the nation's first post-communist president, said the only hope for Myanmar's monks and activists was to stick together — and for the world to rally around their cause.

"My advice for them is to build their own internal solidarity and to make efforts to win international solidarity," he said in an AP interview.

But Myanmar in 2007 is markedly different from eastern Europe two decades ago.

Isolated under a regime that has crushed dissent for the past 45 years, the country formerly named Burma missed out completely on the wave of reform and revolution that swept through the world in the late 1980s.

In 1989, when Havel's followers packed Prague's Wenceslas Square to denounce a regime he famously mocked as "Absurdistan," their sheer numbers and determination prevailed over truncheons and tear gas.

When demonstrators tried the same thing in Myanmar in 1988, thousands were gunned down.

"If they have no solidarity today, they will lose and will have to approach the issue many times again," Walesa said.

Yet "even if they fail, the price (they pay) will speed up the process," he added.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who marshaled tens of thousands of workers in 1980s strikes at Gdansk's gritty shipyard, says the showdown in Myanmar has rekindled a little of his own old fire.

"Maybe I will join in, too," Walesa said. "I will certainly do something because I cannot remain indifferent. ... I like to win."

Fellow laureate Tutu, who won his Nobel Prize for his role in South Africa's anti-apartheid movement, was preparing to join a march in Sweden protesting events in Myanmar when he spoke by telephone to the AP Friday.

"In South Africa we had rolling mass action that covered the action taken by the people. We also had an alliance of faith-based organizations," Tutu said. In Myanmar, "the important thing is that religious leaders have now put their lives on the lines and I admire them for that."

Tutu said he would call on China to use its "very powerful leverage" on Myanmar's leaders. If China did not respond, he said he would join calls to boycott the Beijing Olympics.

Havel, the playwright-turned-president whose nonviolent movement toppled totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia, said he's also ready to go to Myanmar if opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi emerges from longtime house arrest and takes power.

"You can't imagine how happy I would be to travel there as soon as possible," Havel, now 70, told the Czech newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes.

Two years ago, Havel joined the Dalai Lama and other dignitaries to write a poignant letter decrying Suu Kyi's ordeal. "Neither walls nor weapons can silence even the most isolated voice of courage and truth," it said.

But today, asked about the specter of heavy bloodshed, he responded: "I am afraid."

Tutu said of Suu Kyi: "I hope she knows how much the world supports her. She is a remarkable woman."

In another letter last week, Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer, known for her works about the inhumanity of apartheid in her native South Africa, appealed to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to do something "in the name of shared humanity."

"No one anywhere in our world who respects the sanctity of life, justice and the freedom of people to demand reconciliation of conflict through peaceful means can turn aside from the spectacle of Burma," she said.

Sat Sep 29, 11:48 AM ET

YANGON, Myanmar - Myint Myint makes little more than a dollar a day as a construction worker. When the ruling junta doubled fuel prices last month in one of the world's poorest countries, she and her children fell further into poverty.

"Now they are getting used to eating just a meal a day," said Myint Myint, 35, who lives in the outskirts of this city in a thatched shack so rundown that monsoon rains seep through the roof.

The fuel hike triggered what has become the biggest wave of anti-government demonstrations in this isolated Southeast Asian nation since a failed uprising in 1988. It also emphasizes what is driving the protests: A deep and desperate poverty.

Myint Myint comes from one of many neighborhoods around Yangon where electricity and running water are rare and naked children play in muddy, potholed roads. Families from the countryside crowd into one-room homes and eat little more than rice. Jobs are few.

Experts said the government's mistake was raising fuel prices Aug. 15 overnight, without first publicly explaining the increase or considering a phased-in price hike, as other Asian countries have done. A similar misstep sparked the 1988 protests which the junta suppressed by killing 3,000 demonstrators, just after the government increased the price of rice and voided the kyat currency.

"It is a policy that has been applied overnight in a draconian manner," said Charles Petrie, the U.N. humanitarian chief in Myanmar, also known as Burma. "(The protests) are a popular expression of discontent because people do not have the cash reserves to absorb the shock."

The government, which holds a monopoly on fuel sales and subsidizes them, raised prices from 1,500 kyats ($1.16) to 3,000 kyats ($2.33) for about a gallon of diesel. The price of natural gas increased as much 500 percent.

Prices on commodities such as eggs, cooking oil and poultry have increased by an average of 35 percent. Gold prices have gone up while the kyat has weakened. Bus fares cost more.

The government has defended the price hikes as necessary to free up funds for social programs and reduce subsidies, which have increased along with the price of oil.

"The government has no recourse but to remove the subsidies," Thaung Tun, Myanmar's ambassador to the Philippines, told The Associated Press in August. "If you won't do that, it'll be very costly to the government. ... It's not politics."

Fuel prices in Myanmar remain among the lowest in Southeast Asia, despite the subsidy cut, Thaung Tun said. He acknowledged that average residents feel the pinch, but said Myanmar's military leaders would not reverse the move.

As they have done for decades, many of the poor are bearing the new hardships with stoicism. But others in this country where an estimated 90 percent of the population live on about $1 a day have taken to the streets.

Petrie and other economic experts argue the price hike shows the government either is not aware of or doesn't care about the plight of its poorest citizens, especially given its military leaders' taste for the good life.

The image of Gen. Than Shwe, head of the State Peace and Development Council, as the ruling junta is formally known, took a blow last year when video of an extravagant wedding for his daughter leaked out. It showed Thandar Shwe wearing a collection of diamond jewelry and receiving wedding gifts worth $50 million at a fancy reception.

Blessed with abundant natural resources and fertile land, Myanmar should be one of the region's most prosperous countries. But years of government mismanagement have placed it among the 20 poorest countries in the world, the United Nations estimates, with a per capita income of only $200 — 10 times less than its neighbor Thailand.

Its last fiscal surplus was in 1962, the year the military took power.

Sean Turnell, an expert on the Burmese economy with Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, said Burmese are taking dramatic measures just to survive. Many are walking miles to work to avoid paying higher bus fares while others have begun selling furniture and other household goods.

"There are a lot of people who think they have nothing to lose," Turnell said of the frustration in Myanmar. "This isn't about assertions of political or human rights. It's about not having enough money to buy food."

On paper, there are upbeat government predictions of double-digit growth and weekly announcements of oil and natural gas deals with Chinese, Thai and South Korean companies. But experts on Myanmar said the government overstates its economic growth and that most of the oil and gas deals worth an estimated $2 billion are years away from producing significant revenue.

Complicating matters is the cost of building the country's new capital in Naypyitaw and maintaining one of the world's largest armies. Economic sanctions slapped on the regime by the United States and Britain have also hurt.

Strapped for cash, the government has been forced to come up with unorthodox measures to generate revenue, such as printing more money, raising customs duties and cutting fuel subsides.

"The state cannot raise funds in legitimate ways," Turnell said. "There is a real squeeze on the country's finances. If they can survive it for a couple of years, they might get there. But they don't have that cushion."

____

On the Net:

Burma Economic Watch: http://www.econ.mq.edu.au/burma_economic_watch

Sat Sep 29, 11:44 AM ET

YANGON - A UN special envoy arrived in Myanmar on Saturday for talks with the ruling junta, which has locked down the nation's biggest city in a violent campaign to choke off mass demonstrations.

The United States has called on Myanmar's generals to also allow Ibrahim Gambari to meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy icon who has been held under house arrest for most of the past 18 years.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon dispatched the Nigerian-born Gambari to broker negotiations between the isolated military regime and its pro-democracy opponents, who have mounted two weeks of nationwide mass rallies.

A violent crackdown to end the demonstrations -- which has claimed at least 13 lives since Wednesday -- appeared to have largely succeeded in deterring anti-government campaigners from returning to the streets.

In two clashes Saturday, troops beat and dispersed protesters in Yangon, but for the most part the country's largest city was eerily quiet with security forces outnumbering demonstrators and locking down Buddhist monasteries.

At Bogyoke Aung San market, a major tourist destination also known as Scott's Market, warning shots were fired to disperse about 500 anti-government demonstrators, and an unknown number were arrested, witnesses said.

Nearby at the Pansoedan bridge, another 100 protesters gathered, but when they started to clap their hands a squad of about 50 security forces baton-charged them and arrested about five, witnesses said.

"They beat people so badly," said one Yangon resident who witnessed the scene. "I wonder how these people can bear it."

The crackdown, in which hundreds have been arrested, had already succeeded in reducing the intensity of the protests Friday, when only about 10,000 turned out in Yangon compared with up to 100,000 at the height of the rallies.

However, in the central city of Pakokku, witnesses said that Buddhist monks led thousands of protesters Saturday in a peaceful two-hour march which appeared to have been mounted with the approval of local authorities.

"About 1,000 monks led the protest, and they were followed by more people on bicycles and motorbikes," said a witness.

The recent wave of protests has been Myanmar's biggest since an uprising in 1988 that ended with troops killing some 3,000 people, and the regime's bloody response this week has drawn outrage from around the world.

The UN's Gambari said en route to Myanmar that he was looking forward to "a very fruitful visit" and expected to "meet all the people that I need to meet."

After arriving in Yangon he flew straight to the new capital of Naypyidaw where he was expected to meet with regime leader Senior General Than Shwe.

Myanmar's secretive generals last year shifted the capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw, 450 kilometres (250 miles) to the north, in a move observers believe may have been driven by astrologers' advice or fears of a US military attack.

Gambari has visited Myanmar twice before, and on one occasion was allowed to see opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who last week was able to briefly meet protesting monks.

The monks who initially led the protests were nowhere to be seen in Yangon after a brutal campaign of arrests, bashings and monastery raids which has shocked the country.

Troops have blockaded many big monasteries, including those in the religious capital of Mandalay in central Myanmar, and monks are only allowed to move around in small groups.

A Western diplomat based in Yangon said Saturday there were reports of divisions within the military on how to handle the crisis in Mandalay, home to the majority of Myanmar's 400,000 monks.

On Friday, diplomats said they had received information from several sources about "acts of insubordination" within the army and that some soldiers were willing to take the side of demonstrators.

The World Food Programme, meanwhile, said the bloody crackdown has hampered efforts to distribute food to 500,000 vulnerable people, mostly children, and appealed to the junta "for access to all parts of the country."

Myanmar's main Internet connection, cut Friday, remained off Saturday, severely reducing the flow of video, photos and first-hand reports of the violence, which helped inform the world of the crisis in the isolated nation.

Sat Sep 29, 8:43 AM ET

NEW DELHI - Myanmar refugees, including children and monks, staged a protest rally in the heart of the Indian capital and asked for India's intervention.

Carrying posters of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and banners reading "Down with military regime," the group of around 100 protestors shouted slogans against military rule.

"The junta has been very brutal. We condemn this killing of the monks and demand that it should be stopped immediately," said Neng Boi, a spokeswoman.

Neng Boi said the protestors handed over a letter to the Indian prime minister's office, asking New Delhi to put pressure on the Myanmar regime.

On Friday, Indian parliamentarians from various political parties attacked the Myanmar regime for the crackdown, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests and has left at least 13 dead.

The protest came as India walked a diplomatic tightrope, juggling energy and security concerns with a commitment to democracy.

New Delhi kept the military junta at arm's length after a 1988 crackdown on democracy protests and until the mid-1990s was a staunch supporter of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

But it changed tack when it realised its security interests in its far-flung rebel-infested northeastern region, which neighbours Myanmar, were in jeopardy.

There are an estimated 1,700 refugees from Myanmar in New Delhi.

Sat Sep 29, 5:19 AM ET

BANGKOK, Thailand - Just last Sunday — when marches led by Buddhist monks drew thousands in Myanmar's biggest cities — Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora was in the country's capital for the signing of oil and gas exploration contracts between state-controlled ONGC Videsh Ltd. and Myanmar's military rulers.

The signing ceremony was an example of how important Myanmar's oil and gas resources have become in an energy-hungry world. Even as Myanmar's military junta intensifies its crackdown on pro-democracy protests, oil companies are jostling for access to the country's largely untapped natural gas and oil fields that activists say are funding a repressive regime.

China — Myanmar's staunchest diplomatic protector and largest trading partner — is particularly keen on investing in the country because of its strategic location for pipelines to feed the Chinese economy's growing thirst for oil and gas.

Companies from South Korea, Thailand and elsewhere also are looking to exploit the energy resources of the desperately poor Southeast Asian country.

France's Total SA and Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, currently pump gas from fields off Myanmar's coast through a pipeline to Thailand, which takes 90 percent of Myanmar's gas output, according to Thailand's PTT Exploration & Production PLC.

But investing in Myanmar has brought accusations that petroleum corporations offer economic support to the country's repressive junta, and in some cases are complicit in human rights abuses. This week's bloody clampdowns on protests have escalated the activists' calls for energy companies to pull out of the country.

"They are funding the dictatorship," said Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights group with offices in Thailand and Washington. "The oil and gas companies have been one of the major industries keeping the regime in power."

Demonstrations that started a month ago over a spike in fuel prices have become a broader protest against the military rulers. Ten people were killed in two days of violence this week. Soldiers fired automatic weapons into a crowd of demonstrators in Yangon on Thursday and occupied Buddhist monasteries and cut public Internet access Friday. The moves raised concerns the crackdown on civilians was set to intensify.

Myanmar's proven gas reserves were 19 trillion cubic feet at the end of 2006, according to BP PLC's World Review of Statistics. While that's only about 0.3 percent of the world's total reserves, at current production rates and Thailand's contract price for gas, the deposits are worth almost $2 billion a year in sales over the next 40 years.

"It points to the potential that Myanmar has," said Kang Wu, a fellow at the University of Hawaii's East-West Center in Honolulu.

Altogether, nine foreign oil companies are involved in 16 onshore blocks exploring for oil, enhancing recovery from older fields, or trying to reactivate fields where production has been suspended, according to Total's Web site. A block is an area onshore or offshore in which an oil company is granted exploratory and discovery rights.

Offshore, nine companies, including Total, Petronas, PTTEP, South Korea's Daewoo International Corp., Chinese state-run companies China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, are exploring or developing 29 blocks, Total said.

Despite economic sanctions against Myanmar by the United States and the European Union, Total continues to operate the Yadana gas field, and Chevron Corp. has a 28 percent stake through its takeover of Unocal. Existing investments were exempt from the investment ban.

Both Total and Chevron broadly defended their business in the nation.

"Far from solving Myanmar's problems, a forced withdrawal would only lead to our replacement by other operators probably less committed to the ethical principles guiding all our initiatives," Jean-Francois Lassalle, vice president of public affairs for Total Exploration & Production, said this week in a statement.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy urged Total this week to refrain from new investment in Myanmar; the French concern said it had not made any capital expenditure there since 1998.

Chevron's interest in the Yadana project is "a long-term commitment that helps meet the critical energy needs of millions in people in the region," said Nicole Hodgson, corporate media adviser for Asia.

Total and former partner Unocal Corp. were accused of cooperating with the military in human rights violations while a pipeline was being built across Myanmar to Thailand in the 1990s. Both companies have denied the accusations but Unocal settled a related lawsuit in the U.S. in 2005, prior to being acquired by Chevron.

Always worried that instability on its border could affect the juggernaut Chinese economy, Beijing has been gently urging Myanmar's leaders to ease the recent strife. On Thursday, it issued a plea for calm, asking the government to "properly deal" with the conflict.

"The Chinese prefer to separate business and politics," said Kuen-Wook Paik, an energy analyst at Chatham House, a think tank in London. "They want to take a neutral stance. They don't want to risk the relationship with the Myanmar authorities."

But China's chief interest, analysts say, may lie in its strategic location as a site for pipelines to move oil and gas shipped from the Middle East to southern China, avoiding the Malacca Straits, which Beijing worries could be closed off by the U.S. Navy in a conflict.

By building a pipeline, "you start stitching together a crisis management capability," said William Overholt, director of the Center for Asia Pacific Policy at RAND Corp., an American think tank.

Beyond interests in exploration blocks in the Bay of Bengal off Myanmar, India also plans to build a pipeline to eastern India, but disagreements with Bangladesh have delayed the plans.

India is not facing any diplomatic pressure to reduce investment in the country, said R.S. Sharma, chairman of the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

"There is a trade-off between the two: That is a moralistic position and these strategic interests," said Muchkund Dubey, president of the Council for Social Development, a New Delhi think tank, and the former top bureaucrat at India's Foreign Ministry.

Thailand's PTTEP, a partner in Total's Yadana and Petronas' Yetagun gas projects, said in a statement that production of natural gas is at the normal rate, and should not be affected by the unrest.

"It is business as usual," said Sidhichai Jayamt, the company's manager for external relations. "When we have a contract with the government, it doesn't really matter who the government is."

Sat Sep 29, 2:02 AM ET

TOKYO - Japan will urge Myanmar to punish those who are responsible for shooting dead a Japanese journalist in a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, newspapers said Saturday.

Kenji Nagai, 50, a video-journalist for Tokyo-based APF News, with years of experience covering world hotspots, was the first foreigner killed, when the government sent troops to quell protest in Yangon Thursday.

Japan's Deputy Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka is scheduled to visit Myanmar Sunday to deliver the demand to the military regime, the Yomiuri Shimbun said, quoting government sources.

Japan, one of the leading donors to Myanmar, will consider a ban on Japanese investment in the country after receiving its reaction to the demand, the mass-circulation daily said.

Japan in 2003 suspended low-interest loans for major projects, such as infrastructure, to protest the continued detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

But Japan says aid continues for emergencies and humanitarian purposes.

The United States and European nations have decided to tighten sanctions on Myanmar and called for the world to ramp up pressure due to the bloody crackdown.

But Japan, which often jostles for influence with China, Myanmar's main ally, has so far preferred the approach of most regional nations of trying to engage the junta.

The junta's crackdown on the biggest wave of public dissent in nearly 20 years has left at least 13 people dead, hundreds more jailed and sparked international outrage.

Toru Yamaji, president of APF News, left Tokyo on Saturday for Yangon to recover the body of Nagai and his belongings, particularly a video camera Nagai was using at his last gasp.

"It was obvious that a soldier shot him on the back," Yamaji told reporters at Tokyo's Narita Airport before his departure, saying his video may provide details of the killing.

In Tokyo, some 80 demonstrators rallied outside the regime's embassy, carrying pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi and Nagai's body lying on the road against the backdrop of people rushing away from troops.

Separately, some 10 Myanmar nationals began a 42-hour hunger strike in Nagoya, central Japan, to protest the junta's action and call for democratisation of the country, Kyodo News reported.

Sat Sep 29, 12:34 AM ET

YANGON, Myanmar - Soldiers and police took control of the streets Friday, firing warning shots and tear gas to scatter the few pro-democracy protesters who ventured out as Myanmar's military junta sealed off Buddhist monasteries and cut public Internet access.

On the third day of a harsh government crackdown, the streets were empty of the mass gatherings that had peacefully challenged the regime daily for nearly two weeks, leaving only small groups of activists to be chased around by security forces.

"Bloodbath again! Bloodbath again!" a Yangon resident yelled while watching soldiers break up one march by shooting into air, firing tear gas and beating people with clubs.

Thousands of monks had provided the backbone of the protests, but they were besieged in their monasteries, penned in by locked gates and barbed wire surrounding the compounds in the two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay. Troops stood guard outside and blocked nearby roads to keep the clergymen isolated.

Additional troops arrived in the two cities overnight. Soldiers and police were stationed on almost every street corner in Yangon. Shopping malls, grocery stores and public parks were closed, and only a handful of residents ventured out.

The monks remained inside their monasteries late Saturday morning with troops remaining on guard outside and blocking nearby roads. The streets of the Yangon and Mandalay were quiet.

Many Yangon residents seemed pessimistic over the crackdown, fearing it fatally weakened a movement that began nearly six weeks ago as small protests over fuel price hikes and grew into demonstrations by tens of thousands demanding an end to 45 years of military rule.

The corralling of monks was a serious blow. They carry high moral authority in this predominantly Buddhist nation of 54 million people and the protests had mushroomed when the clergymen joined in.

"The monks are the ones who give us courage. I don't think that we have any more hope to win," said a young woman who had taken part in a huge demonstration Thursday that broke up when troops shot protesters. She said she had not seen her boyfriend and feared he was arrested.

Hundreds of people have been arrested, including Win Mya Mya, an outspoken member of the country's main opposition group, the National League for Democracy, who was taken overnight, according to family members.

Anger over the junta's assaults on democracy activists seethed around the globe. Protesters denounced the generals at gatherings across the United States, Europe and Asia.

The White House urged "all civilized nations" to pressure Myanmar's leaders to end the crackdown. "They don't want the world to see what is going on there," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

But analysts said it was unlikely that countries with major investments in Myanmar, such as China and India, would agree to take any punitive measures. The experts also noted that the junta has long ignored criticism of its tough handling of dissidents.

Defiant of international condemnation, the military regime turned its troops loose on demonstrators Wednesday. Although the crackdown raised fears of a repeat of a 1988 democracy uprising that saw some 3,000 protesters slain, the junta appeared relatively restrained so far.

The government has said police and soldiers killed 10 people, including a Japanese journalist, in the first two days of the crackdown, but dissident groups put the number as high as 200.

Diplomats and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday the junta's figure probably was greatly understated, based on the reports of witnesses and others. They provided no estimates of their own and cautioned that witness reports had not been verified.

Getting accurate casualty figures has been difficult, with many residents too afraid to speak out and foreign journalists barred from openly entering Myanmar. Soldiers and police were going door-to-door at some hotels in Yangon looking for foreigners.

Violence continued Friday, but there no immediate reports of deaths from the government or dissident groups.

Just a few blocks from the Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon, some 2,000 protesters armed only with insults and boos briefly confronted soldiers, wearing green uniforms with red bandanas around their necks and holding shields and automatic weapons.

As the crowd drew near, the soldiers fired bullets in the air, sending most of the protesters scurrying away. A handful of demonstrators still walked toward the troops but were beaten with clubs and dragged into trucks to be driven away.

"Why don't the Americans come to help us? Why doesn't America save us?" said an onlooker who didn't want to be identified for fear of reprisal from the junta.

In other spots, riot police chased smaller groups of die-hard activists, sometimes shooting their guns into the air.

"The military was out in force before they even gathered and moved quickly as small groups appeared, breaking them up with gunfire, tear gas and clubs," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press.

"It's tragic. These were peaceful demonstrators, very well behaved," she said.

Authorities also shut off the country's two Internet service providers, although big companies and embassies hooked up to the Web by satellite remained online. The Internet has played a crucial role in getting news and images of the democracy protests to the outside world.

At the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar's most important Buddhist temple, about 300 armed policemen and soldiers sat around the compound eating snacks while keeping an eye on the monks.

"I'm not afraid of the soldiers. We live and then we die," said one monk. "We will win this time because the international community is putting a lot of pressure."

Condemnation of the junta has been strong around the world. On Friday, people protested outside Myanmar embassies in Australia, Britain, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan.

The United Nations' special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, was heading to the country to promote a political solution and could arrive as early as Saturday, one Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

While some analysts thought negotiations an unlikely prospect, the diplomat said the junta's decision to let Gambari in "means they may see a role for him and the United Nations in mediating dialogue with the opposition and its leaders."

World pressure has made little impact on the junta over the years. Its members are highly suspicious of the outside world, and they have shrugged off intense criticism over such actions as keeping pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

Much of the regime's defiance — and ability to withstand economic sanctions imposed by the West — stems from the diplomatic and financial support of neighboring China. Another neighbor, India, also has refrained from pressuring the junta.

Analysts say that as long as those two giant countries remain silent and other Southeast Asian countries keep investing in Myanmar, it is unlikely the junta will show any flexibility. Every other time the regime has been challenged by its own people, it has responded with force.

Still, China has been urging the regime in recent months to get moving with long-stalled political reforms, and on Friday the Chinese government told its citizens to reconsider any trips planned to Myanmar.

Myanmar's fellow members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations expressed "revulsion" over the crackdown and told the junta "to exercise utmost restraint and seek a political solution." Officials in neighboring Thailand said planes were on standby to evacuate ASEAN citizens in case the situation deteriorated.

Sat Sep 29, 12:16 AM ET

YANGON - A special United Nations envoy is due in Myanmar Saturday after a crackdown on protesters, with the US calling on the ruling junta to allow him to meet with democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has dispatched Ibrahim Gambari to broker talks between the military and its pro-democracy opponents, who have mounted two weeks of mass nationwide rallies.

Members of the protest movement vowed to come out on the streets again Saturday, despite a three-day offensive by security forces that has left at least 13 dead and hundreds more jailed.

"We are ready to go to town again. We will start it all over again and we are very hopeful that things will become much more intense as the hours go by," one pro-democracy campaigner involved in the protests told AFP.

"I expect quite a lot of people to be on the streets again today also," he said.

US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Friday led international condemnation of the violence, and renewed pleas to the Myanmar junta to make a "peaceful transition to democracy".

Gambari's itinerary has not been released, but on previous visits he has met with regime leader Senior General Than Shwe, and once with Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for most of the past 18 years.

"We have called on the Burmese to allow him to be able to meet with anyone he wants to meet -- the military leaders, the religious leaders and Aung San Suu Kyi," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Friday.

Myanmar's main city of Yangon, the focus of the protests which represent the strongest challenge to military rule in nearly two decades, was under extremely tight security on Saturday morning, with troops numbers visibly higher.

The two Yangon-based army divisions which have spearheaded the crackdown have now been joined by 66 Division from Pago which lies northeast of the city.

The former capital's main pagodas, which have been rallying points for the protests, remained off-limits and 20 military trucks were stationed at Sule Pagoda in downtown Yangon.

Only a few people ventured onto the streets, marketplaces were closed, and a handful of private cars and taxis were on the roads.

The only people in sight were some householders rushing to buy essential food items before trouble breaks out again.

"We try to finish everything we need to do, buying food and so on, before 11. After that we will not go outside," said one man.

The Buddhist monks who initially led the protests, turning out on the streets in their thousands, were nowhere to be seen after a brutal campaign of arrests, bashings and monastery raids which has shocked the country.

Troops have blockaded many big monasteries, including those in the religious capital of Mandalay in central Myanmar, and monks are only allowed to move around in small groups.

A Western diplomat based in Yangon said Saturday there were reports of divisions within the military on how to handle the crisis in Mandalay, home to the majority of Myanmar's 400,000 monks.

In the past there have been regular reports of tensions at the highest levels of the junta, particularly between Than Shwe and the regime's number-two Maung Aye.

On Friday, diplomats said they had received information from several sources about "acts of insubordination" within the army and that some soldiers were willing to take the side of demonstrators.

The diplomats also said the suffocating security presence had succeeded in reducing the intensity of the protests Friday, when only about 10,000 turned out in Yangon compared to tens of thousands in the previous days.

In Mandalay, thousands of young people on motorbikes rode down a major thoroughfare towards a blockade set up by security forces who unleashed a volley that witnesses believed could have been rubber bullets.

Global pressure on the Myanmar regime has mounted in recent days as images of gunfire, baton charges and tear gas used against demonstrators has galvanised world opinion.

The State Department announced more than three dozen additional government and military officials and their families would be barred from traveling to the United States.

Public protesters have shown their anger outside Myanmar embassies across the globe. The UN Human Rights Council called a special meeting on the Myanmar unrest for Tuesday in Geneva.

Myanmar's main Internet connection was cut Friday, severely reducing the flow of video, photos and first-hand reports of the violence which helped inform the world of the crisis in the isolated nation.

Fri Sep 28, 11:33 PM ET

TOKYO - Japan strongly protested to Myanmar over the killing of a Japanese video journalist during an anti-government rally, and Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win offered apologies, Kyodo news agency said on Saturday.

Fifty-year-old Kenji Nagai was fatally wounded in Yangon on Thursday, and pictures smuggled out of the country showed him clutching a camera as he lay dying.

Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura made the protest when he met his Myanmar counterpart at U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday.

The death of Nagai "was extremely regrettable and we will lodge a stern protest," Japanese officials quoted Komura as telling Nyan Win, Kyodo said.

Nyan Win told Komura he was indeed sorry for the death, telling Japanese officials: "Demonstrations are beginning to calm down, and we would also like to exercise restraint," Kyodo said.

Japanese Foreign Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.

Nagai was the first foreign victim of the protests that began as sporadic marches against fuel price hikes but have swelled over the past month into mass demonstrations against 45 years of military rule in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.

Fri Sep 28, 11:19 PM ET

TOKYO - Japan lodged a protest with Myanmar over the death of a Japanese journalist during a crackdown on protesters and said it will dispatch a senior official to press the country to respond to international concerns, an official said Saturday.

Kenji Nagai, 50, was among at least nine people killed Thursday when soldiers fired automatic weapons into a crowd of pro-democracy demonstrators.

Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura protested Nagai's death, calling it "extremely regrettable," in a meeting with Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win at U.N. headquarters in New York on Friday, according to a Foreign Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

Nyan Win said he was "extremely sorry" for the death, and added that the Myanmar government hopes to exercise self-restraint, the official said.

Tokyo has so far ruled out immediate sanctions against Myanmar. Komura suggested that tougher steps could be taken.

Officials have said Nagai, who was carrying a video camera, was believed to have been shot in the chest. A video broadcast by Japan's Fuji Television Network appeared to show a soldier directly shooting him in the front.

Komura pressed Nyan Win for an accounting of what happened, the official said.

Fri Sep 28, 10:57 PM ET

YANGON - United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari travels to Myanmar on Saturday carrying worldwide hopes he can persuade its ruling generals to use negotiations instead of guns to end mass protests against 45 years of military rule.

"He's the best hope we have. He is trusted on both sides," Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said. "If he fails, then the situation can become quite dreadful."

So far, the junta appears to have ignored the international clamor for a peaceful end to what blossomed from tiny protests against shock fuel price rises in August into a mass uprising led by monks, the moral core of the Buddhist nation.

Yangon was eerily quiet on Saturday morning after troops and riot police barricaded off the city centre from where the protests have reverberated around the world.

Authorities have told foreign diplomats based in Yangon that the trouble was being handled with restraint.

So far, that has meant raiding at least a dozen monasteries thought to be at the van of the protests, detaining perhaps hundreds of monks and sealing off city areas around two pagodas which marked the start and end of the daily mass protests.

So far, it appears to be working and the junta restored international Internet links early on Saturday after cutting them the previous day following a flood of pictures and video of soldiers chasing protesters traveling through it to the world.

On Friday, very few monks took part in the much smaller protests around the barricades. People in Yangon said many young monks were evading arrest by casting off their maroon robes and taking refuge in houses disguised as laymen.

"Peace and stability has been restored," state-run newspapers declared on Saturday, after security forces handled protests "with care, using the least possible force."

SCARED CITY BRACED

However, people in the neighborhood reported the Minnada monastery was raided on Friday and that shots were fired.

Monks have reported six of their brethren have been killed since the army started cracking down on Wednesday to end mass protests by columns of monks flanked by supporters who filled five city blocks.

Yeo said he did not think there would be much action on the streets while Gambari was in Myanmar, but people in Yangon were braced for more of the cat and mouse protests which had kept the city tense on Friday.

Crowds taunted and cursed security forces for hours on Friday around the barbed-wire barriers in a city terrified of a repeat of 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3,000 people in crushing an uprising in the country, then known as Burma.

When the troops charged, the protesters vanished into narrow side streets, only to emerge elsewhere to renew their abuse until an overnight curfew took effect.

State-run media admit nine people have been killed since the crackdown began, prompting international outrage.

"I am afraid we believe the loss of life is far greater than is being reported," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Friday after talking to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Bush and Brown discussed the need to maintain international pressure on Myanmar's rulers and the White House condemned the crackdown as "barbaric."

INTERNATIONAL CLAMOUR

Bush authorized new U.S. sanctions on Thursday against the Myanmar government, which has been operating under similar restrictions for years.

The European Union summoned Myanmar's senior diplomat in Brussels and warned him of tighter sanctions.

EU experts looked into possible restrictions on exports from Myanmar of timber, precious metals and gems, but reached no decisions, one diplomat said. Investments by specific Europeans in the country were not raised, he said.

Activist Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign U.K., calling the EU sanctions "pathetic," said a freeze on assets had netted less than 7,000 euros in all 27 EU member states and many countries allowed their companies to do business in Myanmar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said sanctions were premature but he was sorry to hear about civilian deaths. "As far as sanctions are concerned, this is a topic to be especially considered in the United Nations," he Putin.

Russia, like China, is a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council and has shown growing interest in Myanmar's rich gas fields.

China, the junta's main ally, publicly called for restraint

for the first time on Thursday. But at the United Nations, China has ruled out supporting sanctions or a U.N. condemnation of the military government's use of force.

The Association of South East Asian Nations, which rarely criticizes a member directly, expressed "revulsion" at the crackdown.

There were protests across Asia on Friday, with many people wearing red to symbolize the blood spilled in Myanmar, and outside the United Nations building in New York.