YANGON: UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari pressed on for talks with Myanmar's detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and top junta officials on Friday to try to bring the opposition into the regime's election plans.

Gambari went to the government's War Office here early Friday and met the information minister, Brigadier General Kyaw Shan, according to Myanmar officials who did not want to be named.

He arrived in Yangon on Thursday, his third visit to the country since the regime launched a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests last September, killing at least 31 people according to the United Nations.

Myanmar's tightly controlled state media have said little about his latest mission. State television and official newspapers have limited themselves to briefly summarising Thursday's schedule, without comment.

Gambari has arrived to a different political landscape from his last visit in November.

A month ago, the regime surprised the world by announcing it would hold a constitutional referendum in May, setting the stage for multiparty democratic elections in 2010.

The junta also brought in a law criminalising public speeches and leaflets about the referendum and announced that Aung San Suu Kyi would be barred from running in elections because of her marriage to a foreigner, Briton Michael Aris, who is now dead.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party has already warned that the public would not accept the junta's new charter, but it has stopped short of calling for a boycott or urging a "No" vote.

Gambari has tried to open a dialogue between the Nobel peace prize winner, who has been kept under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years, and the regime.

His initial efforts seemed promising. After his first mission in the aftermath of the crackdown, the junta appointed a liaison officer to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi while military supremo Senior General Than Shwe made a heavily conditioned offer to meet her himself.

But Than Shwe shunned Gambari on his last visit here, and no meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi has taken place.

Even the talks with the liaison officer have dragged, with Aung San Suu Kyi saying in January that she was "not satisfied" with their progress.

The junta has so far not scheduled any talks between Gambari and Aung San Suu Kyi for this trip. Even his departure date has not been settled, although diplomats expect him to leave Sunday.

If held, the planned polls would be the first in the country formerly known as Burma since Aung San Suu Kyi led the NLD to a landslide victory in 1990, a result the junta never recognised.

Foreign diplomats who met Gambari on Thursday said he was concentrating on encouraging dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi and the regime.

He is expected to press the junta to allow some kind of campaigning during the referendum while looking for ways to include Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD in the polls.

However, analysts say that he faces an uphill battle in trying to win any concessions from the unpredictable generals, who have so far resisted outside pressure to reform.

So far, the junta has only been willing to make minor concessions, such as allowing Gambari to visit, despite the worldwide outrage sparked by the bloody repression of September's peaceful marches led by Buddhist monks.

Those protests were the biggest challenge to military rule for nearly two decades, and security forces responded by opening fire on the crowds.

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962.


- AFP/so