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YANGON: Myanmar's opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday 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 on 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.
The military regime instead unveiled its own "road map" to democracy and after more than a decade of delays drafted a new constitution, which was approved in a referendum in May.
The junta says the charter will set the stage for elections in 2010, but the pro-democracy movement says the process simply enthrones the army's position in the nation it has ruled since 1962.
"We firmly believe that the way to bring about democracy peacefully is the seven-step road map," Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said in comments to Gambari published in the New Light of Myanmar on Sunday.
He also told Gambari: "We have made all necessary arrangements for Your Excellency to meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Your Excellency also wished to meet with her and tried your best."
Gambari flew to Yangon last Monday hoping to revive talks between Aung San Suu Kyi and the regime, but he was shunned by her and the junta's senior leadership, meeting only the prime minister, who holds little power.
In a statement released late Saturday, the United Nations said only that Gambari held "open and extensive meetings" with Prime Minister Thein Sein.
- AFP/so
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