(dpa) - United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari met Monday with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the second time on his five-day mission to Myanmar.
Suu Kyi, leader of National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was released from her home-cum-jail slightly after noon and taken to the Sein Le Kan Tha State Guest House, where she held talks with Gambari for about an hour after also meeting him Saturday.
The content of their talks was not immediately known, but it was unlikely that Gambari had any good news for Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since May 2003 and has spent 12 of the past 18 years detained in her family compound in Yangon.
Gambari, who arrived Thursday, attempted to persuade the ruling junta to allow for an amendment to a draft constitution that would allow Suu Kyi to contest a general election planned in 2010, but Myanmar authorities flatly turned down the request.
Information Minister and Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan told Gambari Friday that the regime rejected a request by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the regime amend the document to "ensure inclusiveness."
"The constitution has already been drafted, and it should not be amended again," Kyaw Hsan said, according to state media.
In a letter dated February 19 to Myanmar's military supremo, Senior General Than Shwe, the UN secretary general called for amendments to the draft constitution that would drop a clause excluding all Myanmar nationals married to foreigners from running for election.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San, was married to the late Michael Aris, a British professor at Oxford University.
The new constitution, drafted by a military-appointed forum, is to be voted on in a referendum in May. It is widely expected that the constitution would be approved in the referendum, which is expected to be manipulated.
On his mission to Myanmar, Gambari also failed to persuade the junta to allow foreign observers to monitor the referendum to assure it is free and fair.
"He must be pretty disappointed," said Win Min, a lecturer on Myanmar political affairs at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, "but there is nothing he can do."
Gambari's effort to pressure the military to hold talks with Suu Kyi and other opposition representatives on national reconciliation has been sidelined by the junta's decision to hold a referendum on a new constitution, which took 14 years to draft, and to hold an election in 2010.
While in Yangon, government spokesman Kyaw Hsan urged the visiting UN envoy to support the junta's seven-step "road map to democracy" and stop pursuing alternatives suggested by Western democracies.
"We shall not accept any attempt to hinder or reverse the process of the seven-step road map," Kyaw Hsan said. "However, we will heartily welcome the positive suggestions of the UN to help implement the seven-step road map."
Gambari, who was scheduled to depart Monday or Tuesday, last visited Myanmar in the aftermath of a brutal military crackdown in September on monk-led, anti-government protestors in Yangon, which left at least 31 people dead, according to the United Nations.
The incident reignited international outrage at the military regime's abysmal human rights record and refusal to implement political reforms.
Myanmar's last election of 1990 was won by Suu Kyi's NLD, but the regime denied the elected members of parliament political power, citing the need to draft a new constitution before handing power over to civilian rule.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962.