UN envoy to visit Myanmar Thursday, March 6, 2008
UNITED NATIONS, (AFP) — UN troubleshooter Ibrahim Gambari will return to Myanmar on Thursday to resume his bid to foster national reconciliation after the military regime's bloody crackdown on dissent last year, a UN spokeswoman said Monday.
Michele Montas said Gambari, UN chief Ban Ki-moon's special adviser on Myanmar, would leave Tuesday for the visit at the invitation of the government.
She told a press briefing that Gambari would arrive in the Southeast Asian nation on Thursday "and hopes to stay as long as necessary and to consult with a broad range of representatives of Myanmar society, including all the groups which he was not able to see during his last visit (last year)."
Montas said details of the program were still being worked out and noted that Gambari "looks forward to the continued cooperation of the Myanmar government."
It will be Gambari's third visit to Myanmar since the junta's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in September.
The military regime announced last month that it would hold a referendum in May to set the stage for democratic elections in 2010.
But it added that it would bar Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader who is under house arrest, from contesting the polls, raising major doubts about their credibility.
Michele Montas said Gambari, UN chief Ban Ki-moon's special adviser on Myanmar, would leave Tuesday for the visit at the invitation of the government.
She told a press briefing that Gambari would arrive in the Southeast Asian nation on Thursday "and hopes to stay as long as necessary and to consult with a broad range of representatives of Myanmar society, including all the groups which he was not able to see during his last visit (last year)."
Montas said details of the program were still being worked out and noted that Gambari "looks forward to the continued cooperation of the Myanmar government."
It will be Gambari's third visit to Myanmar since the junta's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in September.
The military regime announced last month that it would hold a referendum in May to set the stage for democratic elections in 2010.
But it added that it would bar Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader who is under house arrest, from contesting the polls, raising major doubts about their credibility.