UN envoy's Myanmar visit was a 'waste of time', says NLD
Myanmar's opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday labelled a recent visit by a UN envoy "a waste of time" as the ruling junta continued to trumpet its own vision of democracy.
Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations' most senior negotiator with Myanmar, left the country Saturday after failing to secure a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, who is kept under house arrest by the ruling generals.
The junta said that the Nobel peace prize winner had refused to see Gambari, and on Sunday printed pictures in its New Light of Myanmar newspaper of his entourage waiting in vain outside her lakeside home in Yangon.
Nyan Win, a spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, said he did not know why their leader was unable to meet Gambari, but said no key demands of the democracy movement had been resolved.
"I have read reports in the newspaper that the authorities did not reply to the two aims of Mr. Gambari's mission," Nyan Win told AFP.
"One is to release political prisoners including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the other is the dialogue between the government and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," he said, using an honorific to describe the pro-democracy leader.
"In conclusion, Mr. Gambari's visit resulted in no improvement and was a waste of time."
Aung San Suu Kyi led the NLD to a landslide election victory in 1990, but was never allowed to govern.
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