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YANGON: UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari arrived in Myanmar's main city of Yangon on Friday to prepare for a possible visit by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, an AFP correspondent said.
Gambari touched down on a commercial flight and was then driven to his hotel from the airport in a UN vehicle.
UN sources have said he will meet members of the ruling junta and politicians from the party of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
He is to brief the UN chief on the outcome of his mission and Ban will then decide whether to go ahead with plans to visit Myanmar early next month, according to the UN sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Myanmar official who would not be named said Gambari would arrive on Friday and leave on Saturday. He would land in the main city of Yangon at 9:20 am (0250 GMT) and travel to the administrative capital Naypyidaw, the official said.
The UN boss and Gambari have been trying to persuade Myanmar's military regime to free all political detainees, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and to steer their country on the path to democracy and national reconciliation.
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize laureate, has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention since the ruling generals refused to recognise the landslide victory of her National League for Democracy (NLD) in 1990 elections.
She is being held on charges of violating her house arrest after an American man swam to her lakeside house earlier this year.
Aung San Suu Kyi's party spokesman and lawyer Nyan Win said her trial would continue at Insein prison on Friday and he did not yet know if Gambari would meet with the detained democracy leader.
"We will go to the trial at Insein prison today at 10:00 am. Like his previous visit he might meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi but we haven't got any information yet," Nyan Win told AFP.
The charges against her come amid a wide-ranging crackdown on the opposition that has been carried out since the ruling generals crushed protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been ruled by the military since 1962.
- AFP/so
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