October 18, 2001	Thursday	Rajab 30, 1422

YANGON, Oct 17: The UN’s human rights envoy to Myanmar held talks on Wednesday with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi before ending his visit to the military-ruled country early due to ill health.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, spent around 90 minutes with Suu Kyi and other senior members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) in the Yangon lakeside residence where she has been held under de facto house arrest for more than a year.

Pinheiro arrived on October 9 and had been due to stay until Saturday. But United Nations officials said he was leaving on Wednesday evening and returning to his native Brazil for health reasons.

Contacted by telephone ahead of his talks with Suu Kyi, Pinheiro declined to comment on his latest visit to Myanmar.

“It’s a bit premature to comment. I’m preparing a press communique,” he told Reuters. “Our headquarters in Geneva will issue it today.”

Pinheiro, making his second visit to the country, met senior government members before leaving for the Shan, Kachin and Mandalay areas of the country on October 13.

NLD Secretary U Lwin told BBC Myanmar-language radio on Wednesday that Pinheiro should have spent less time with government officials.

“During this visit, he shouldn’t have spent so much time with government and other officials without investigating the basic human rights situation,” U Lwin said.

PARIAH STATE: Myanmar is regarded as a pariah state by much of the international community because of its human rights record and its treatment of the NLD.

The government began regular confidential meetings with Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi a year ago, aimed at breaking the political deadlock.

The talks have not yielded any concrete political deal, but since they began the government has been steadily releasing political detainees.

On the day Pinheiro arrived, five NLD prisoners were freed, bringing the total number of releases since the talks began to 174.

Pinheiro first visited Myanmar in April after being appointed as special envoy in February by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

A report written by Pinheiro and released by the U.N. earlier this month welcomed efforts by Myanmar’s ruling military to improve human rights in the country, but repeated calls for the release of all political prisoners.

Amnesty International says there are more than 1,500 political detainees in Myanmar.

Pinheiro’s predecessor, Rajsoomer Lallah, was never allowed to visit Myanmar, and in his final report last year he accused the military of torturing, raping and executing civilians.—Reuters