Burma's fragile dialogue between the military junta and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has failed to moved forward for months now. Things have gotten so bad that there now seems little prospect of the United Nations-sponsored dialogue resolving the political deadlock.
What hopes there are are pinned on the current visit of Paulo Pinheiro, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Burma. Mr Pinheiro is in Rangoon on his latest week-long mission to assess the situation before he delivers a verbal report to the annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva in three weeks time.
Mr Pinheiro last November threatened to resign from his post if there was no substantial progress on the recommendations he made in his last report tabled at the UN General Assembly in New York. These included progress in the dialogue process, the release of political prisoners and Rangoon agreeing to an independent assessment of allegations of human rights violations in ethnic minority areas, particularly Burma's northeast Shan state where Burmese soldiers stand accused of deliberately and systematically raping ethnic women, according to research in the area by two Thai-based human rights groups.
Mr Pinheiro is confident his proposals on an independent inquiry into these allegations will be accepted by Burma's military rulers during his current visit, a senior United Nations official told the Bangkok Post.But the special rapporteur is extremely disappointed that only a handful of political prisoners have been freed since his last visit. No political detainees were released for four months, until last Sunday when the military authorities said they had released 49 prisoners. The opposition has only been able to confirm that three students were among those freed.
``The human rights envoy will be asking some very tough questions on the issue of political prisoners during this visit,'' a UN official in New York said.
The release of political prisoners has been one of the few concrete results of secret talks between the UN and the military. More than 500 political prisoners have been released since the dialogue began more than two years ago. International human rights groups estimate that there are still more than 1,200 political prisoners in Burma's jails.
Burma's generals defend their position on security grounds. ``In order to maintain security, we have to be very careful in how we release certain prisoners,'' government spokesman Colonel Hla Min said. ``But that does not mean that we won't release any more. We will.``But we also have to make sure that the country's security and peace is maintained, so we have to do it gradually. Once we are confident that security and stability will not be disturbed then we can go on releasing prisoners.''
This reasoning is not something Mr Pinheiro accepted last year, so the regime will have to find some convincing arguments for continuing to keep so many political prisoners locked up.
Diplomats in Rangoon are convinced that the junta is using political prisoners as a bargaining chip with the international community. So Mr Pinheiro will have no alternative but to tell the generals that this is unacceptable and they must release them as soon as possible.
The Burmese military authorities are going to have to provide the UN special rapporteur with some major concessions if he is not to resign at the end of the month after reporting back to the UN in Geneva. ``There is every possibility that this may be professor Pinheiro's last visit,'' said a senior UN official.
The UN envoy has come under increasing criticism from the Burmese political opposition, who cannot accept his appeals to the international community to credit the junta for some of the progress that has been made and to engage the regime more rigorously rather than adopt tougher sanctions. Many Western countries, particularly the United States and some Europe nations, are beginning to feel tougher sanctions are necessary to force the generals to keep their promises to introduce political reform.
``There should be no question whatever about our commitment towards this process of national reconciliation,'' Burma's Deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win said. ``The reconciliation process is very important. We are in the process of transition to a democratic system because we want our country to be developed and modernised.''
But despite the constant insistence on the part of Burma's military leaders that they are committed to the dialogue, the reality suggests otherwise. Since Ms Suu Kyi's release from house arrest more than nine months ago, there has been little effort by the generals to talk to the opposition leader.
``I see it very simply,'' she told the Bangkok Post in an exclusive interview recently at the National League for Democracy headquarters in Rangoon. ``The SPDC [State Peace and Development Council] is just not ready to talk. We've been trying to get to the negotiating table for 14 years but they have never been keen on the idea.''
Ms Suu Kyi has been trying since her release to coax the regime into serious political talks with herself and the NLD _ offering to cooperate with the army on various matters, including some involving international humanitarian assistance.
``We have tried to make it very clear to the SPDC we do not want to be the enemy,'' she said. ``We do not want to look upon them as the enemy. We are in opposition to each other at the moment but we should work together for the sake of the country.
``We certainly bear no grudges against them. We are not out for vengeance. We want to reach the kind of settlement which will be beneficial to everybody, including the members of the military.''
But these repeated appeals have fallen on deaf ears. ``The top generals just cannot bring themselves to meet Aung San Suu Kyi personally and prefer to delay the day when the army has to acknowledge she has a crucial and central role in Burma's political future,'' said a senior Western diplomat in Rangoon.
In the meantime, UN officials are trying to arrange the next trip of another special envoy to Burma, Razali Ismail, who helped to broker the dialogue between the two sides. Military authorities have tried to deflect the requests to schedule the visit for as soon as possible. They rejected the requests in February by saying the government was ``too focused on the country's financial problems to think about anything else at the moment''.
More recently, they have simply told the UN that it was not possible to receive the envoy at the moment. They did not give any concrete reasons. In fact, the military regime has virtually told the envoy to stop contacting them and they would be in touch when they were ready, according to diplomats in Rangoon.
UN sources believe this reflects the generals' wish to avoid having to explain why the government has not had any contact with the opposition leader for more than four months, nor met any of the promises made to Mr Razali when he was last in Rangoon.
``Mr Razali doesn't expect to return to Rangoon before the end of April at the earliest,'' according to a senior UN source. ``And he may not be able to visit before June the way things are going.''
In the meantime, the regime seems more committed to finding ways of delaying talking to Ms Suu Kyi and dragging the dialogue process out indefinitely.