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YANGON - Myanmar's junta has arrested more people just hours after the departure of a UN envoy who came to the country to try to end a ruthless crackdown on protests that has sparked international outrage.
At least eight truckloads of prisoners were hauled out of central Yangon, the former Burma's biggest city and focus of last week's monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship, witnesses said.
In one house near the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest shrine in the Buddhist nation and starting point for the rallies, only a 13-year-old girl remained. Her parents were taken, she said.
"They warned us not to run away as they might be back," she said after people from rows of shophouses were ordered into the street in the middle of the night. Many were detained.
A staff member of the UN Development Fund and her husband and brother-in-law were arrested early on Wednesday during a sweep by Myanmar authorities, UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said in New York. The United Nations is appealing to Myanmar's UN mission to secure her release.
The crackdown continued despite some hopes of progress by UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari on his mission to persuade junta chief Than Shwe to relax his grip and open talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whom Gambari met twice.
Singapore, the current chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) of which Myanmar is a member, said it "was encouraged by the access and cooperation given by the Myanmar government to Mr Gambari."
The envoy was in Singapore on his way back to New York but is unlikely to say anything publicly before briefing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Gambari was expected to return to Myanmar in early November, UN sources said.
But there were no signs how his mission and international pressure might change the policies of a junta which seldom heeds outside pressure, has endured years of sanctions by Western governments and rarely admits UN officials.
"I don't expect much to come of this. I think the top leadership is so entrenched in their views that it's not going to help," said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington.
"They will say they are on the road to democracy and so what do you want anyway?" he added, referring to the junta's "seven-step road to democracy."
The first of the seven steps was completed in September with the end of an on-off, 14-year national convention which produced guidelines for a constitution that critics say will entrench military rule and exclude Suu Kyi from office.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, said Washington and its allies must continue to press other members of the UN Security Council for "a strong resolution against the Burmese regime."
China, the closest the junta has to an ally, has made rare public calls for restraint but rules out supporting any UN sanctions against Myanmar. Russia, like China a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, also opposes sanctions.
The protests - the biggest challenge to the junta since it killed an estimated 3000 people while crushing an uprising in 1988 - began with small marches against fuel price rises in August and swelled after troops fired over the heads of monks.
The junta says the instability was met with "the least force possible" and that Yangon and other cities had returned to normal. It says 10 people were killed and describes reports of much higher tolls and atrocities as a "skyful of lies."
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer agreed with other Western governments that the real figure was higher.
"It's hard to know but it seems to me that the number of 30, which is the number we've officially been using, is likely to be an underestimate," he told Australian radio.
In Brussels, EU ambassadors agreed to toughen existing sanctions against Myanmar and look at trade bans on its key timber, metals and gems sectors, officials and diplomats said.
"There was full agreement on reinforcing existing measures," one diplomat said of the decision, which will be sent to EU foreign ministers for approval in mid-October.
"On the second measures, a number of member states took the view it should be done only after further information was obtained, particularly on how they would affect the local population."
The junta appears to believe it has suppressed the uprising, with barricades around the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas lifted and an overnight curfew eased by two hours.
Eighty monks and 149 women believed to be nuns swept up in widespread raids were released. Five local journalists, one working for Japan's Tokyo Shimbun newspaper, were also freed.
A heavy armed presence remained on the streets of Yangon and Mandalay, the second city, witnesses said. The junta was also sending gangs through homes looking for monks in hiding, raids Western diplomats say are creating a climate of terror.
"The international community should not let this murderous regime get away with their serial killings," Aung Din, director of the US Campaign for Burma and an exiled leader of student protests in 1988, said in prepared remarks to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
- REUTERS
