The Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was briefly released from 12 years of house arrest yesterday to meet a United Nations envoy sent to demand an end to the military junta’s crackdown on democracy protesters.

Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Burma, arrived on Saturday, as thousands of soldiers and police occupied the centre of Rangoon, arresting, beating and firing rubber bullets at the remnants of last week’s massive street demonstrations.

But the success of his mission remains in doubt, after it emerged that he has not yet met with the leader of the Burmese junta, General Than Shwe.

In Burma’s official capital, the newly built city of Naypyidaw, Mr Gambari met with its deputy foreign minister and ministers of information and culture.

Who will win? Can the world help?

What can the world do about the situation in Burma? Will it make any difference? Who, if anyone, can really have an influence?

Multimedia

• In pictures: Burma violence

• Video: protests in Rangoon

BACKGROUND

• Burmese bloggers defy the censors

• After 45 years, is this the end?

• How monks became threat to regime survival

• World split over response to Burma crisis

• Burma: a travellers' guide

Related Links

• Bloggers risk all to reveal junta’s brutality

• ‘Blood’ rubies bankroll Burmese junta

• Burma junta divided over Suu Kyi talks

But his failure to gain an audience with General Than Shwe suggests that, despite international denunciation of last week’s killings of protesters, the junta is unwilling to contemplate any loosening of its 45-year monopoly on power.

A statement by the UN said that Mr Gambari “looks forward” to meeting the general before leaving Burma, but he spent last night in the former capital Rangoon, having flown the 240 miles back there from Naypyidaw.

Western diplomats in Rangoon say that his visit will amount to little unless he is able to meet both the leader of the junta and Ms Suu Kyi in an effort to promote a dialogue between them.

No details were released of his meeting with Ms Suu Kyi, who was taken to the Rangoon State Guest House from the home where she has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years.

The other senior diplomatic visitor to Burma yesterday was Mitoji Yabunaka, a Japanese vice-minister, who came to protest against the death last week of Kenji Nagaim, a Japanese photographer who was apparently shot at point blank range while recording a police charge on demonstrators in central Rangoon.

Times Recommends

• How the fall of the Wall freed Nelson Mandela
• Iguacu, the world’s most spectacular waterfall
• How Harrods helped Burmese cats return