Suu Kyi Health Declining, Backers Say

Opposition leader to meet UN envoy today amid claims of illness
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 6, 2007 8:31 AM CST
Suu Kyi Health Declining, Backers Say
A Myanmar activist raises a poster of the country's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as protestors opposing the Myanmar military government line up outside the main entrance of Japan's Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2007. Suu Kyi is scheduled to meet the UN's envoy to Burma amid...   (Associated Press)

The UN's special envoy to Burma has returned to meet with Aung San Suu Kyi, writes the Guardian, amid reports she is being treated for an unspecified illness. Ibrahim Gambari held talks with senior members of the military junta—though not its top general, who refused to meet him—in their isolated new capital, Naypyitaw. Gambari is en route to Rangoon today to meet the leader of the democratic opposition.

Burmese democracy activists outside the country said doctors had been visiting Suu Kyi's compound, where she remains under house arrest. If the 62-year-old Suu Kyi's health is indeed failing, it might give Gambari added leverage against the junta. But the UN's authority in Burma is ebbing—last Friday its top official in the country was expelled, and the junta blamed the UN for stoking the September protests. (More Burma stories.)

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