The Army is back in control in Burma. Thousands of troops patrolled the streets of Rangoon yesterday, and the dwindling amount of footage still being smuggled past the junta’s media black-out showed few civilians moving around the cowed city. The military Government clearly now feels that it has a firm enough grip on the situation to allow in the United Nations envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, and to give him a token opportunity to talk briefly to Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader still under house arrest. Mr Gambari also met three junior generals of the ruling junta. But he has been blocked in his initial attempt to act as intermediary with Than Shwe, the secretive head of the junta, or his deputy. The junta is in no mood to make concessions.

The crackdown appears to have been as ruthless and as sweeping as the outside world had feared. The Government has admitted that ten people were killed on Wednesday, but Western governments say the toll is far higher. The Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission said that at least 700 monks and 500 other people have been rounded up across the country. Monasteries have been raided, hundreds of monks have been beaten and two of the main pagodas in central Rangoon have been sealed off. One video shot yesterday by a dissident group showed a monk, covered in bruises, floating face down in a Rangoon river.

Mr Gambari is well able to convey the disgust felt across the world at the latest thuggish response from this dictatorship. Yesterday the Pope added his voice to other pleas for restraint. But there is little evidence that these will worry or influence General Than Shwe and his colleagues, isolated in their new bunker-like capital Naypyitaw.

What ought to concern them more is the condemnation voiced by the Association of South East Asian Nations, of which Burma is a member, and the rare criticism from China. Burma’s neighbours and main trading partners are not fooled by the crass propaganda on state television, showing huge pro-government rallies. When China says it is “very much concerned about the current situation”, the junta know that its behaviour is increasingly unacceptable, even in a region that has often put human rights below the need for economic development.

What is now crucial is for the three countries that can exert leverage – China, India and Japan – to go beyond words in dealing with the junta. Japan certainly appears ready to take a stronger line. It is to review the aid it gives Burma, and a senior envoy arrived in Rangoon yesterday to ensure a full investigation into the fatal shooting of a Japanese journalist, and also to warn the generals that Japanese public opinion has been outraged by what has happened. India has said or done little. The Indians may feel uncomfortable about their neighbour, but regard a working relationship as essential if they are to stop Maoist and separatist groups in the turbulent northeast states using Burma as a haven. And India, like China, is hungrily eyeing Burma’s huge oil and gas reserves.

Both countries should look again at their relationship. Unless they use their leverage to push for reconciliation, they will have on their borders an unpredictable, misgoverned and undeveloped neighbour that will prove neither a reliable partner nor an acceptable ally. The junta may feel that, with Burma under lockdown, the crisis has passed. It needs to be told bluntly that it has not.