By EDITH M. LEDERER,

AP

Posted: 2008-01-17 21:47:22

UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The U.N. Security Council expressed regret at Myanmar’s slow progress in opening a dialogue with the opposition and called for the early return of U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari to help promote national reconciliation and the restoration of democracy.

The council “underscored the importance of making further progress” on the objectives it set out in an Oct. 11 statement, which include protecting human rights and releasing all political prisoners and detainees. “An early visit to Myanmar by Mr. Gambari could help facilitate this,” it said Thursday.

Gambari told reporters after meeting with the council that he asked to go to Myanmar later this month but the country’s military rulers sent word “that it’s not convenient and they will prefer mid-April.”

He said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the government “that’s not acceptable, and I agree, so we are in the process of negotiating an early, rather than a later, return to Myanmar.”

Myanmar’s junta has been strongly criticized for sending troops to quash peaceful protests against a fuel price hike, initially led by students and then by Buddhist monks, in late September. The government said 10 people were killed, but diplomats and dissidents say the death toll was much higher. Thousands of monks and civilians were arrested.

The Security Council on Thursday reiterated its support for Gambari’s efforts and for the objectives in its Oct. 11 statement, which strongly deplored the government’s crackdown and called for a “genuine dialogue” between the junta and the pro-democracy opposition.

Council members “regretted the slow rate of progress so far toward meeting those objectives,” the council statement said.

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador John Sawers said “it’s important that the council sets out that we can’t go back to the situation before the demonstrations of last September and the brutal repression of the authorities.”

“The government in Burma needs to respond to the concerns of the international community as set out” in the Oct. 11 statement, he said. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

Gambari said after his last visit to Myanmar from Nov. 3-8 that he was making progress in nudging Myanmar’s military junta toward meaningful dialogue with the pro-democracy opposition. But he acknowledged there were “serious concerns” about “the willingness of the government to move forward in a new direction.”

Asked Thursday whether there were any positive signs, Gambari noted that detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with a representative of the junta for the first time in nearly two months last Friday. It was their fourth meeting, and Gambari said he did not know what transpired.

But he said it is important “to translate these discussions into the inauguration of a substantive dialogue that will address the grievances of the people, which are both social-economic as well as political.”

While all regional countries are on record supporting his mission, Gambari said, “I’m not satisfied with that. I want that general verbal express of support to be translated into concrete action.”

Regional countries should “get the right message to the authorities in Myanmar to address the concerns of the international community, to listen to their own peoples,” he said.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said “countries with influence … need to express their displeasure with the lack of progress and encourage progress.”

“There is a huge gap between where we need to be and where we are,” he said.

Khalilzad singled out China, India and Myanmar’s fellow members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and said the Security Council should also take “appropriate measures including sanctions as means to narrow that gap.”

Myanmar’s junta took power in 1988 after crushing the democracy movement led by Suu Kyi. In 1990, it refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide election victory. Since then, Suu Kyi has been in and out of detention, kept in near-solitary confinement at her home.