Fri Oct 5, 1:30 PM ET

PARIS - French oil group Total has no intention of withdrawing from Myanmar though it will heed President Nicolas Sarkozy's request to freeze future investments, company president Christophe de Margerie said Friday.

"Investing in the country at this stage would be a provocation," he told Le Monde newspaper. "But our investments go back to the 1990s and there have been none since.

"Total will not pull out. Some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) want us to, but others recognise the usefulness of what we are doing," he said.

De Margerie rejected allegations that Total uses forced labour at its gas-field in Yadana. This week the Belgian courts re-opened a case brought by Myanmar refugees alleging human rights abuses.

"Twice already there have been cases before Belgian courts, and twice they have been rejected. I repeat: there is no forced labour at our installations," he said.

Last week Sarkozy urged French businesses including Total to freeze their investments in Myanmar, where the military regime has violently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations.

Fri Oct 5, 1:16 pm ET

Myanmar Internet Shutdown Is Human Rights Abuse: UN Telecom Chief


GENEVA -- The decision by Myanmar's military-led government to block access to the Internet from within the country violated its citizens' right to communicate, the head of the U.N. telecoms agency said Friday.

Secure access to the Internet is a basic human freedom that "needs to be preserved, no matter what," said Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union.

"No government has the right to cut off its citizens from cyberspace," he told reporters in Geneva.

The Myanmar government shut down the country's Internet service providers last month as part of a crackdown on the biggest anti-regime rebellion in nearly two decades.

Dissidents and foreigners had used the Internet to get word of the government's brutal quashing of the protests to the outside world.

The government says 10 people were killed but oppositions groups say up to 200 people died when security forces attacked demonstrators who were largely led by Buddhist monks.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council that Myanmar's military rulers have to "take bold actions towards democratization and respect for human rights," which observers say are regularly abused in the Southeast Asian country.

"What is wrong in the conventional world is wrong in cyberspace as well," Toure said.

Bloggers from at least 45 countries joined forces on Thursday for an online protest against Myanmar's efforts to keep citizens from sending photographs, videos and reports to the outside world.

Fri Oct 5, 12:00 PM ET

YANGON - Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party dismissed the Myanmar junta's offer of talks as surreal on Friday, as a U.N. envoy warned of "serious international consequences" from its brutal suppression of pro-democracy protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, addressing the U.N. Security Council after a four-day visit to Myanmar, called for the release of all political prisoners there and voiced concern at reports of continuing government abuses in the wake of last week's protests.

"Of great concern to the United Nations and the international community are the continuing and disturbing reports of abuses being committed by security and non-uniformed elements, particularly at night during curfew, including raids on private homes, beatings, arbitrary arrests, and disappearances," Gambari told the Council.

Gambari also said there were unconfirmed reports that the number of casualties was "much higher" than the dozen people reported killed by the government.

The junta says 10 people were killed in the crackdown on the biggest challenge to the junta in nearly 20 years, though Western governments say the toll is likely to be far higher.

The Western powers have called for the Security Council to impose sanctions on Myanmar, but veto-holding China is opposed to any action by the 15-member body because the junta's crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners was an internal affair.

Addressing the Council just before Gambari, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for "bold actions" by the military government toward democratization and respect for human rights.

"The use of force against peaceful demonstrators is abhorrent and unacceptable," he said.

Senior General Than Shwe, who caused international outrage by sending in soldiers to crush the peaceful monk-led demonstrations, was asking Suu Kyi to abandon the campaign for democracy that has kept her in detention for 12 of the last 18 years, an opposition spokesman said.

"They are asking her to confess to offences that she has not committed," said Nyan Win, spokesman for the Nobel peace laureate's National League for Democracy (NLD), whose landslide election victory in 1990 was ignored by the generals.

Than Shwe, head of the latest junta in 45 unbroken years of military rule of the former Burma, set out his conditions for direct talks at a meeting with Gambari on Tuesday, state-run television said.

It said Suu Kyi must abandon "confrontation," give up "obstructive measures" and support for sanctions and "utter devastation," a phrase it did not explain.

"It is very difficult to see how that will be productive because basically he has asked Aung San Suu Kyi publicly to surrender before the meeting takes place," Georgetown University Myanmar expert David Steinberg told Reuters Television.

"You could say it's a psychological ploy and at the same time it's very clear that the military is not making any concessions."

Nyan Win demanded Suu Kyi be allowed to respond in public.

That is unlikely. The only time Suu Kyi has been seen in public since she was last detained in May 2003 was during one monk-led demonstration when protesters were inexplicably allowed through the barricades sealing off her street.

People who applauded protest marches could face two to five years in jail, said Win Min, who fled to Thailand in 1988 as the army crushed an uprising at the cost of around 3,000 lives. Leaders could face 20 years, he said.

The Norway-based opposition Democratic Voice of Burma quoted relatives as saying about 50 students who demonstrated in Mandalay had been sentenced to five years hard labor.

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The United States called on the junta to talk to Suu Kyi without conditions and U.S. charge d'affaires Shari Villarosa went to the new capital, Naypyidaw, to urge it to begin a "meaningful dialogue" with opposition groups.

A diplomatic source said she was to see Deputy Foreign Minister Maung Myint, who is not a policymaker.

With China, the closest thing the junta has to an ally, blocking action at the United Nations, and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) -- one of the few international groupings of which Myanmar is a member -- unwilling to change its policy, experts say little is likely to happen.

Singapore, ASEAN's current chairman and a leading investor in Myanmar, said the group would continue its policy of engagement with Myanmar, one which has shown no more signs of influencing the generals than Western sanctions, to try to "help it move forward."

"We have to be mindful of the realities," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told his country's Straits Times newspaper. "Sanctions against a regime that is ready to isolate itself are more likely to be counter-productive than effective."

The junta says all is back to normal after "the least possible force" was used to end demonstrations which began with small marches against huge fuel price rises in August and escalated after troops fired over the heads of protesting monks.

Fri Oct 5, 11:26 AM ET

UNITED NATIONS - The United States said on Friday it would propose a U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions on Myanmar if the government there does not "respond constructively" to international concern about repression of pro-democracy protests.

"If the Burmese government does not take appropriate steps ... the United States is prepared to introduce a resolution in the Security Council imposing sanctions," U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the Security Council.

"We must all be prepared to consider measures such as arms embargoes," Khalilzad said, urging Myanmar's neighbors to exert the maximum pressure in the meantime to get the military government there to cooperate with U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari's efforts to promote dialogue.

Fri Oct 5, 11:25 AM ET

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown agreed on Friday to keep up international pressure on Myanmar's rulers, and the White House condemned the crackdown there as "barbaric."

Bush and Brown spoke by video link about "the need for countries around the world to continue to make their views clear to the junta that they need to refrain from violence and move to a peaceful transition to democracy," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

In Myanmar, crowds taunted soldiers and police who barricaded central Yangon to prevent more mass protests against 45 years of military rule and deepening economic hardship in the former Burma.

"The crackdown on peaceful protesters there is quite barbaric," Stanzel told reporters.

State-run television said nine people were killed on Thursday, but Brown told reporters British authorities believed the death toll was "far greater than is being reported."

Brown said Myanmar's government had responded with "oppression and force" to the calls for restraint. "The international community must intensify its efforts," he said in a statement issued before his talks with Bush.

First lady Laura Bush, who has taken an active role in bringing attention to human rights abuses in Myanmar, issued a statement condemning the violence.

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

"The United States stands with the people of Burma. We support their demands for basic human rights: freedom of speech, worship, and assembly," she said. "We cannot, and will not, turn our attention from courageous people who stand up for democracy and justice."

Asked whether Bush and Brown discussed the possibility of encouraging Myanmar's people to overthrow their government if protests grew into a full-scale uprising, Stanzel said: "That would be a hypothetical. ... We certainly support the people who are marching for democracy and peace."

Bush announced tightened sanctions against Myanmar's rulers on Tuesday. Brown said on Friday that Britain was pressing for tougher European Union sanctions.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey on Friday unveiled new sanctions that made more than three dozen additional government and military officials and their families ineligible to receive visas to travel to the United States.

Washington "will add others who bear responsibility for the ongoing attacks on innocent civilians and other human rights abuses," Casey said in a statement.

Jeremy Woodrum of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, an advocacy group based in Washington, said Western countries were "getting it right" by tightening sanctions on Myanmar to put the squeeze on leaders.

The next step was to widen bank account freezes to "target their personal money and make sure they can't bring it in and out of the country," Woodrum said.