AP

Posted: 2007-12-21 21:09:48

WASHINGTON (AP) – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for renewed international pressure on Myanmar to end a crackdown on opposition and restore civilian rule.

In a news conference at the State Department, she said that attention by other countries has waned since the country violently repressed protests by Buddhist monks in September.

“Frankly, as the international community unfortunately sometimes does, that energy dissipates,” she said Friday.

Later in the day, the U.S. State Department said that Myanmar had arrested at least six student activists this week, demonstrating that the crackdown is continuing.

“These ongoing arrests belie the Burmese regime’s claim that it seeks a genuine and peaceful transition to democracy,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.

Rice also called for the United Nations to take a harder line with Myanmar, also known as Burma, and to back up the efforts of its envoy to Burma, Ibrahim Gambari.

“The Gambari mission that the secretary-general launched needs to have more profile. It needs to have more vigor,” she said. “It needs to be, I believe, more insistent on the junta that a special representative of the United Nations secretary general cannot be treated the way that the junta has treated Mr. Gambari. It’s simply unacceptable.”

Myanmar’s military junta has chafed at Gambari’s efforts to galvanize international pressure for reform and has snubbed some of his attempts to discuss reform. Last month, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also abruptly withdrew an invitation to Gambari to address Asian leaders after Myanmar objected.

Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. The current junta took power in 1988 after brutally crushing pro-democracy demonstrations at a cost of an estimated 3,000 people.