Breaking News For November - Myanmar

When will the Breaking News for December be posted? I want to get a head start.

The New York Times
November 14, 2007
U.N. Envoy to Myanmar Calls Junta Responsive
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 13 — The United Nations special envoy to Myanmar said Tuesday that the situation there was “qualitatively different” from the way it was in the aftermath of September’s brutal crackdown on protesters, but that the authorities had still showed no willingness to free the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Reporting to the Security Council on his visit to Myanmar last week, the official, Ibrahim Gambari, said curfews had been lifted, the military had left the streets and most of the 2,700 people the government said it had detained had been released.
“On balance, the positive outcomes of this latest mission show that the government of Myanmar, while stressing its sovereignty and independence, can be responsive to the concerns of the international community,” he said.
Mr. Gambari, who has visited Myanmar twice in two months, said the ruling generals assured him that he could return “in their words, again and again and again.”
But while he noted that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi had been allowed to make a public statement for the first time in four years and to meet with members of her political party, the military was still unwilling to end her house arrest.
“I have stressed to the government that the best way to make real their commitment to dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is to release her without delay,” he said.
He said the military had told him it had stopped detaining people, but John Sawers, the British ambassador, noted that Su Su Nway, an activist who has worked to rid Myanmar of forced labor, had just been detained. He said the act “raises question marks over the commitments given to Professor Gambari that arrests have ceased.”
He added, “The small steps forward described by Professor Gambari today are welcome and could be the beginning of a process that achieves peace, prosperity and stability, but it could also be a false dawn.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, warned that the Myanmar authorities should not use the process of talks and invitations to Mr. Gambari as a substitute for substantive progress on ending military repression and moving the country toward democracy. “A process for process’s sake will not be acceptable,” he said.
Comments from the ambassadors exposed a familiar pattern of responses from the Council’s five permanent members, with Britain, France and the United States pushing for speedier action and China and Russia cautioning against it.
“We are convinced that threats, pressure and sanctions exerted from the outside are counterproductive,” said Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador.
Wang Guangya, China’s ambassador, said the process should remain “incremental” and warned: “Sanctions will not help resolve the issue, but further complicate the situation. Sanctions will undermine the dialogue that is starting.”
Kyaw Tint Swe, the Myanmar ambassador, told the Council that the 91 people who remained in custody were not political demonstrators but people “who have been found to be involved in unlawful activities, including conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.”
Mr. Swe told the Council that “this is the time for encouragement and not for undue outside pressure.” The Council, he said, “should refrain from taking any actions at this critical juncture.”

The New York Times
November 14, 2007
U.N. Envoy to Myanmar Calls Junta Responsive
By WARREN HOGE
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 13 — The United Nations special envoy to Myanmar said Tuesday that the situation there was “qualitatively different” from the way it was in the aftermath of September’s brutal crackdown on protesters, but that the authorities had still showed no willingness to free the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Reporting to the Security Council on his visit to Myanmar last week, the official, Ibrahim Gambari, said curfews had been lifted, the military had left the streets and most of the 2,700 people the government said it had detained had been released.
“On balance, the positive outcomes of this latest mission show that the government of Myanmar, while stressing its sovereignty and independence, can be responsive to the concerns of the international community,” he said.
Mr. Gambari, who has visited Myanmar twice in two months, said the ruling generals assured him that he could return “in their words, again and again and again.”
But while he noted that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi had been allowed to make a public statement for the first time in four years and to meet with members of her political party, the military was still unwilling to end her house arrest.
“I have stressed to the government that the best way to make real their commitment to dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is to release her without delay,” he said.
He said the military had told him it had stopped detaining people, but John Sawers, the British ambassador, noted that Su Su Nway, an activist who has worked to rid Myanmar of forced labor, had just been detained. He said the act “raises question marks over the commitments given to Professor Gambari that arrests have ceased.”
He added, “The small steps forward described by Professor Gambari today are welcome and could be the beginning of a process that achieves peace, prosperity and stability, but it could also be a false dawn.”
Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, warned that the Myanmar authorities should not use the process of talks and invitations to Mr. Gambari as a substitute for substantive progress on ending military repression and moving the country toward democracy. “A process for process’s sake will not be acceptable,” he said.
Comments from the ambassadors exposed a familiar pattern of responses from the Council’s five permanent members, with Britain, France and the United States pushing for speedier action and China and Russia cautioning against it.
“We are convinced that threats, pressure and sanctions exerted from the outside are counterproductive,” said Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador.
Wang Guangya, China’s ambassador, said the process should remain “incremental” and warned: “Sanctions will not help resolve the issue, but further complicate the situation. Sanctions will undermine the dialogue that is starting.”
Kyaw Tint Swe, the Myanmar ambassador, told the Council that the 91 people who remained in custody were not political demonstrators but people “who have been found to be involved in unlawful activities, including conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.”
Mr. Swe told the Council that “this is the time for encouragement and not for undue outside pressure.” The Council, he said, “should refrain from taking any actions at this critical juncture.”

Myanmar Rubies Have Dealers Seeing Red
Published: 11/16/07, 6:46 PM EDT
By MICK ELMORE
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - The rich red hue of Myanmar's prized rubies is a reminder to many gem dealers of the military government's bloody crackdown on democracy advocates, and talk of a boycott is increasing.
"There is a growing awareness that it is a fascist regime," said Brian Leber, a third generation American gem dealer.
"Considering what this regime has done to its own people, we're troubled to see that a precious stone is offering such a great source of cash for them," he said in a telephone interview from the Chicago suburb of Western Springs, Ill.
"Trade in these stones supports human rights abuses," New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement this week. "The sale of these gems gives Burma's military rulers quick cash to stay in power." Myanmar is also called Burma.
But a successful boycott of what activists call "blood rubies" will prove difficult. More than 1,500 people from more than 20 countries registered for a gems auction that opened Wednesday, despite the boycott calls. While some rubies are exported legally, many also are smuggled out of Myanmar.
The ruby trade puts money in the junta's pocket, since it controls mining concessions, but the scale of the profit is hard to assess. Secrecy shrouds both the gem trade and the country as a whole.
In 1964, Myanmar introduced an annual gem auction, and starting in 1992 the sale was held twice a year. In more recent times, a special third auction has been held each year.
First lady Laura Bush issued a statement Friday calling for a boycott of the event by the gem industry and urging consumers to reject any stone from Myanmar.
"These funds prop up the regime, allowing it to continue to harass, arrest and sentence peaceful activists who seek freedom of speech, worship and assembly," she said. "Every Burmese stone bought, cut, polished and sold sustains an illegitimate, repressive regime."
The government has taken other steps to increase earnings, including an effort to cut smuggling. The country's New Gemstone Law, enacted in 1995, allows people in Myanmar to mine, produce, transport and sell finished gems and jewelry at home and abroad - as long as they pay tax, which smugglers don't.
Most rubies are trafficked as rough stones. They are dug out of mountainsides in the Mogok and Mong Hsu areas of northeast Myanmar. From there, they are carried on a long, perilous journey over mountains, through jungles and insurgent-prone areas, changing hands several times on their way to Thailand.
There, the rough stones are heat-treated with chemicals at high temperature for long periods to bring out the brilliant color and clear away small cracks.
Once cooked, cut and polished, the gems are sold to foreign wholesalers, who distribute them to jewelers around the world.
The biggest determiner of the final price is the success of the heat enhancement. If done improperly, the process can split a stone and make it almost worthless; done right, a ruby can become more expensive per carat than a diamond.
The best large stones fetch millions of dollars. The Christie's auction house, on its Web site, lists a ring set with an 8.62 carat ruby which sold for $3.6 million - a record per carat price of $425,000 - in February 2006.
The vast majority, however, are stones of up to 2 carats which miners in Myanmar sell for just a few dollars. They end up in jewelry shops with price tags ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
The smuggling bypasses the state-owned Myanmar Gem Enterprise that oversees the industry and runs the gem auctions in the city of Yangon.
The Myanmar Gem Enterprise said it generated sales of nearly $300 million in fiscal year 2006-2007, according to Human Rights Watch.
The agency did not respond to questions from The Associated Press sent by e-mail.
Dealers in Bangkok estimate the generals earn at least $60 million annually from gems, but some say the amount could be as high as 10 times that.
Whatever the figure, a growing number of dealers want to deny the junta any windfall from rubies.
But imposing sanctions will be fraught with problems, particularly since as many as 90 percent of the world's rubies come from Myanmar. Most go to the United States, Europe and Japan. Myanmar also exports jade, sapphires and pearls.
The industry would almost have to ban the trade in rubies altogether for the embargo to work, said P.J. Joseph, a teacher at the Asia Institute of Gemological Sciences, a school and lab in Bangkok.
"Things are stacked against the embargo working. The generals are pretty used to divide and rule, and it will be difficult to get all countries involved. China, India and Southeast Asia are the key," he said, adding that these would probably not join.
Arnold Silverberg, who owns AJS Gems in Bangkok, said an embargo hurts all the mom and pop businesses in the industry.
"The amount of money the generals get from gems is minuscule compared to the money they get elsewhere. The generals don't give a damn, they have all the money in the world," he said.
Silverberg said those pushing the boycott "are just trying to make themselves feel good. But we're starving the people, not the generals. I feel bad for the Burmese people."
Jewelers of America supports the ban of Myanmar rubies, advising its more than 11,000 members to "to source their gemstones in a manner that respects human rights," the group's president, Matthew A. Runci, said in a statement released last month.
Sanctions didn't work well before.
American companies stopped buying rubies in 2003, when the United States banned imports of all Myanmar products under a law enacted in reaction to the ruling generals' human rights abuses.
The following year the U.S. Customs Department created a loophole, exempting gems cut or polished in other countries from the ban. More than 90 percent of Myanmar's gems are exported in rough form.
Most colored stones from Myanmar are cut and polished in Chanthaburi, Thailand, a global gem center. Often those that arrive cut and polished are done over because the skill level in Myanmar is inferior to Thai workmanship, dealers in the southeast Thai town say.
But even during the total ban on Myanmar gems, many passed under the radar by being sold as coming from Vietnam or Sri Lanka. When the loophole was introduced they started being Myanmar rubies again.
Despite such problems, Leber, the Illinois dealer, disagrees with the boycott opponents. "It's not a question if it's going to be effective. It just feels wrong to sell rubies from Burma."
Copyright 2007 Associated Press

Myanmar Sends Mixed Messages on Reform
Published: 11/18/07, 1:45 PM EDT
By MICHAEL CASEY
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - The United Nations heaped praise on Myanmar's military junta this week for allowing meetings with prominent political prisoners, and said that progress was being made in brokering discussions between the government and opposition.
But for knowledgeable observers, recent visits by U.N. envoys Ibrahim Gambari and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro have done little to change the reality on the ground two months after anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks were violently crushed.
The regime gave Pinheiro rare access to the infamous Insein Prison. But pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest and substantive talks between her and the junta on the nation's future remain a remote possibility.
"The fact that her status remains the same - a house prisoner with no freedom to move about, talk informally with anyone she wants, when she wants - suggests that nothing is happening of importance," Josef Silverstein, a retired Rutgers University professor who has studied Myanmar for a half century, said in an e-mail interview.
"As long as she does not enjoy full freedom, she is in an inferior position and can't influence what is happening in Burma," Silverstein said.
Other critics said that the continued arrests of dissidents - three were detained Wednesday - also raised doubts about the government's commitments to honor promises made to the U.N., including an end to political arrests.
"The conducive atmosphere is not established yet and we don't really see the political will of the military regime," said Naing Aung, who fled the 1988 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters and is now secretary general of the Thailand-based Forum for Democracy in Burma.
The military has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, since 1962, crushing periodic rounds of dissent. It held elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi's party won a landslide victory. Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 12 of the last 18 years in government custody.
In the latest round of protest, the regime killed at least 15 protesters - diplomats have put the figures much higher - and detained nearly 3,000. The regime has since claimed that it has released most detainees, though many prominent activists remain in custody. Internet service has been restored, and a ban on assembly lifted.
The junta also agreed to allow Gambari into the country to promote talks between the junta and the pro-democracy movement. The visit resulted in the regime naming a minister in charge of relations with Suu Kyi and then allowing her to meet members of her National League for Democracy for the first time in more than three years.
The junta has nonetheless warned against interference in the country's affairs. The generals rejected a U.N. proposal for three-way talks including Suu Kyi, and plan to expel the main U.N. representative in the country for criticizing the government.
Suu Kyi has little hope of seeing any change without U.N. diplomacy backed by sustained interest from China, Myanmar's closest ally. She has told party members that she is "very optimistic" for the prospects of a U.N.-promoted reconciliation.
Trevor Wilson, a Myanmar expert at the Australian National University in Canberra, said the regime's moves should be seen as positive but be followed by concrete steps.
"I think there needs to be further substantive discussion between the military regime and opposition," Wilson said. "I'm sure that Aung Suu Kyi would see that as the next step."
Other Myanmar watchers cautioned that the junta's moves have to be seen against the background of the U.N.'s history of failure in the country - and the regime's practice of making promises to coincide with key diplomatic meetings such as this week's Association of Southeast Asian Nations annual summit in Singapore, where it is hoping to avoid a rebuke from the 10-country grouping.
On Sunday, ASEAN rejected the U.S. Senate's call to suspend Myanmar, saying the military-ruled country is part of the family and must be disciplined with dialogue. It also said it wanted to build on Gambari's recent achievements.
A similar mood of optimism took hold during the tenure of the last U.N. envoy, Malaysian diplomat Razali Ismail. He managed to secure the release of Suu Kyi in 2002, and the regime declared "the era of confrontation is over."
But a year later, Suu Kyi was put back under house arrest. In 2006 Razali resigned, frustrated at being barred from entering the country for nearly two years.
"Really, we are back where we started in 2003, when the junta re-arrested Suu Kyi for speaking to her party leaders about strategizing for democratic change," said George Mason University professor John G. Dale in an e-mail interview. "No major concessions have been made yet."
Copyright 2007 Associated Press.

Myanmar's Suu Kyi Meets Liaison Minister
Published: 11/19/07, 6:45 AM EDT
By MICHAEL CASEY
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Monday for a third time with the Cabinet minister designated to handle relations with her in the latest effort to nudge along political reconciliation in Myanmar.
Suu Kyi met for an hour with Relations Minister Aung Kyi at a government guest house near her lakeside home where she is held under house arrest, said officials and nearby residents, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release official information.
Details of the meeting were not made available.
Their talk came as Myanmar's military government was defending itself at a meeting in Singapore of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - ASEAN - for its violent crackdown in September on pro-democracy demonstrations.
Aung Kyi was appointed on Oct. 8 at the urging of U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari after the U.N. Security Council expressed concern at the junta's actions and urged it to open talks with the country's pro-democracy movement. Aung Kyi is tasked with coordinating contacts with Suu Kyi, who has been in detention for 12 of the last 18 years.
Suu Kyi met Aung Kyi for the first time on Oct. 25 and then again on Nov. 9, when she was also allowed to meet the leaders of her opposition National League for Democracy party for the first time in more than three years.
The meetings between Suu Kyi and Aung Kyi were publicized in state media, but details of what they discussed were not released.
In a statement released through Gambari on Nov. 8, Suu Kyi said her first meeting with Aung Kyi was constructive. But she characterized their meeting as "preliminary consultations," calling for "meaningful and timebound dialogue" with the junta leadership to start as early as possible.
Junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe announced in early October that he was willing to meet with Suu Kyi, but only if she met certain conditions, including renouncing support for foreign countries' economic sanctions against the regime and abandoning her confrontational stance.
Suu Kyi responded indirectly through her statement that in the interests of the nation, she is ready to cooperate with the government to make the dialogue process a success.
The military has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, since 1962, crushing periodic rounds of dissent. It held elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi's party won in a landslide.
In crushing September's protests, the regime killed at least 15 people, according to information authorities provided to U.N. human rights investigator Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. Dissidents and diplomats suspect the true figure is much higher.
The government has said it detained almost 3,000 people during the crackdown and that most of them have been released, but many prominent political activists remain in custody.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press

Southeast Asian Leaders Adopt Charter
Published: 11/20/07, 6:45 AM EDT
By BETH DUFF-BROWN
SINGAPORE (AP) - Southeast Asian leaders adopted a landmark charter Tuesday but their vision to create an EU-style bloc faced hurdles because of concerns over Myanmar, whose military rulers have defied international calls to restore democracy.
The pact will collapse if one country fails to ratify it. The Philippines has warned that its Congress would be hard-pressed to do so unless Myanmar upholds the charter's principles of democracy and human rights and releases pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
On Monday, the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations abruptly withdrew an invitation to U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari to address Asian leaders after Myanmar objected.
They further rejected calls to suspend Myanmar from the bloc to punish the junta's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left 15 people dead in September, and its refusal to free Suu Kyi.
"ASEAN leaders will strive to prevent the Myanmar issue from obstructing our efforts to deepen integration and build an ASEAN community," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his opening remarks at the annual summit.
Still, ASEAN leaders urged Myanmar's junta to open a "meaningful dialogue" with Suu Kyi, release her from house arrest, free all political detainees and work toward a "peaceful transition to democracy."
ASEAN's Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong insisted the body was not kowtowing to Myanmar, also known as Burma, by shelving Gambari's scheduled address on Wednesday.
"We don't want to come across as being too confrontational in a situation like this," Ong told reporters.
Gambari arrived at the summit venue - a luxury hotel in downtown Singapore - and launched into private meetings with officials from Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The key event of the gathering was the adoption of the ASEAN charter after nearly three years of haggling.
The ASEAN charter sets out a common set of rules for negotiations in trade, investment, environment and other fields. It aims to turn Southeast Asia into a single market and production base with a free flow of goods, services, investment and capital.
One of the most significant pledges in the charter is to set up a regional human rights body. Critics note, however, that it will have limited impact given that it will not be able to punish governments that violate the human rights of their citizens.
Negotiators have watered it down by dropping earlier recommendations to consider sanctions, including possible expulsion, in cases of serious breaches of the covenant by member nations.
"Of course there has been some watering down," said former Indonesian foreign minister Ali Alatas, who helped draft the charter. Still, "I think it's a good step forward; it's a momentous step forward."
Bodyguards for Myanmar's foreign minister, Nyan Win, pushed away reporters trying to get him to comment on the debate. "I have no comment on that question," Nyan Win said when asked about why the junta would not release Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years.
On Monday, the top U.S. trade official warned ASEAN that its lack of action against Myanmar's junta jeopardized progress on expanding a trade and investment pact signed last year with the United States, the region's top trading partner.
ASEAN "has a special responsibility when it comes to the situation in Burma," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said after a meeting with ASEAN economic ministers. "The reputation and credibility of ASEAN as an organization has been called into question because of the situation in Burma."
ASEAN was founded during the Cold War years as an anti-communist coalition, evolving into a trade and political bloc. It consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
_
Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Eileen Ng and Vijay Joshi in Singapore contributed to this report.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press.

UN: Myanmar Must Free All Child Soldiers
Published: 11/23/07, 9:45 PM EDT
By ALEXANDRA OLSON
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Myanmar should release all its child soldiers and allow U.N. officials to verify government claims that officers have been punished for recruiting minors into the army, the U.N. chief said in a report released Friday.
There are credible reports that Myanmar's army continues to recruit children under 18 despite an official prohibition of the practice, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his report to the U.N. Security Council.
Recruiters often lure poor children with promises of shelter and food, while others are picked up for not having identification cards and threatened with arrest unless they join the army, Ban said. Army commanders sometimes pay "brokers" $30 and a bag of rice for each recruit.
The army is under "enormous pressure" to increase recruitment rates, and reportedly makes soldiers who want to leave the army recruit as many as four replacements.
The U.N. has also received credible reports that a number of children have been arrested and sentenced to prison for up to five years for desertion, Ban said.
The report covered the period between July 2005 and September 2007 - just before Mynamar's government drew international condemnation for brutally crushing pro-democracy protests. The U.N. has since intensified efforts to nudge the ruling junta and the opposition into a reconciliation process.
Both Myanmar's government and ethnic guerrilla groups have long been accused of using child soldiers, and both sides have acknowledged the allegations in recent years amid UN efforts to highlight the issue.
Responding to a report last month by New York-based Human Rights Watch, Myanmar's government said it had strengthened regulations forbidding the recruitment of minors since establishing a committee to oversee the problem in 2004.
Some 141 minors were dismissed from the military and returned to their parents between 2004 and August 2007, said Ye Htut, deputy director general of Myanmar's Information Ministry. Disciplinary action was taken against nearly 30 military personnel for violating recruitment rules, he said.
Ban acknowledged that "the government has shown increasing interest in addressing underage recruitment and has engaged the United Nations on the issue." He said the U.N. has received periodic updates since 2005 from Mynamar's Committee for the Prevention of Recruiting Underaged Children from Military Recruitment.
But he said the U.N. has been largely unable to verify government claims that those responsible for underage recruitment have been disciplined or that any children have been released. The U.N. team has not been given access to any minors the government claims to have freed, he said.
Ban also criticized the government for denying U.N. official access to areas where guerrilla groups operate, leaving investigators unable to verify the most recent reports of children in their ranks.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press

UN: Myanmar Must Free All Child Soldiers
Published: 11/23/07, 9:45 PM EDT
By ALEXANDRA OLSON
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Myanmar should release all its child soldiers and allow U.N. officials to verify government claims that officers have been punished for recruiting minors into the army, the U.N. chief said in a report released Friday.
There are credible reports that Myanmar's army continues to recruit children under 18 despite an official prohibition of the practice, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his report to the U.N. Security Council.
Recruiters often lure poor children with promises of shelter and food, while others are picked up for not having identification cards and threatened with arrest unless they join the army, Ban said. Army commanders sometimes pay "brokers" $30 and a bag of rice for each recruit.
The army is under "enormous pressure" to increase recruitment rates, and reportedly makes soldiers who want to leave the army recruit as many as four replacements.
The U.N. has also received credible reports that a number of children have been arrested and sentenced to prison for up to five years for desertion, Ban said.
The report covered the period between July 2005 and September 2007 - just before Mynamar's government drew international condemnation for brutally crushing pro-democracy protests. The U.N. has since intensified efforts to nudge the ruling junta and the opposition into a reconciliation process.
Both Myanmar's government and ethnic guerrilla groups have long been accused of using child soldiers, and both sides have acknowledged the allegations in recent years amid UN efforts to highlight the issue.
Responding to a report last month by New York-based Human Rights Watch, Myanmar's government said it had strengthened regulations forbidding the recruitment of minors since establishing a committee to oversee the problem in 2004.
Some 141 minors were dismissed from the military and returned to their parents between 2004 and August 2007, said Ye Htut, deputy director general of Myanmar's Information Ministry. Disciplinary action was taken against nearly 30 military personnel for violating recruitment rules, he said.
Ban acknowledged that "the government has shown increasing interest in addressing underage recruitment and has engaged the United Nations on the issue." He said the U.N. has received periodic updates since 2005 from Mynamar's Committee for the Prevention of Recruiting Underaged Children from Military Recruitment.
But he said the U.N. has been largely unable to verify government claims that those responsible for underage recruitment have been disciplined or that any children have been released. The U.N. team has not been given access to any minors the government claims to have freed, he said.
Ban also criticized the government for denying U.N. official access to areas where guerrilla groups operate, leaving investigators unable to verify the most recent reports of children in their ranks.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press

Dalai Lama Condemns Myanmar Crackdown
Published: 11/27/07, 5:46 PM EDT
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ
AMRITSAR, India (AP) - The Dalai Lama said Tuesday he supported the recent pro-democracy demonstrations in Myanmar and condemned the crackdown on the Buddhist monks who led them, saying it reminded him of China's oppression of Tibetans.
Myanmar's military rulers crushed a series of pro-democracy protests in September, killing at least 15 people according to information authorities gave the U.N., and detaining nearly 3,000 protesters. Monks were at the forefront of the movement. Diplomats and dissidents say the death toll was much higher.
"When I saw pictures of people beating monks I was immediately reminded of inside Tibet, in our own case, where just a few days ago monks were beaten by Chinese forces," the Dalai Lama said.
"I am fully committed and I have full support and sympathy for the demonstrators," the Tibetan spiritual leader told reporters on the sidelines of the Elijah Interfaith Summit of world religious leaders in the northern Indian city of Amritsar.
The meeting, which brought together prominent Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh and Jewish leaders, focused on using religion to spread peace and resolve conflict.
The Dalai Lama urged the military junta in Myanmar - a staunchly Buddhist country - to heed the Buddha's teachings.
"They should be Buddhists. Please act according to Buddha's message of compassion," he said.
The military has ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, since 1962, crushing periodic rounds of dissent. It held elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power to the democratically elected government.
The Dalai Lama has been leading a campaign for autonomy and religious freedom for Tibet, which China has ruled since its Communist-led forces invaded Tibet in 1951.
The 72-year-old Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, has been based in the Indian hill town of Dharmsala since he fled Tibet in the face of advancing Chinese soldiers in 1959.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press