A special envoy of the United Nations landed in Burma today for what is widely viewed as a doomed attempt to open discussions between the military junta and the incarcerated opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

The visit is Ibrahim Gambari’s third since the country’s military shocked the world with a bloody crackdown on Buddhist monks and other anti-government protestors in September.

His two previous trips have yielded little in the way of credible evidence that the junta is truly committed to its own “roadmap to democracy”.

Human rights groups, diplomats and other observers believe instead that the Government is now more deeply entrenched and decreasingly troubled by the rest of the world’s outrage.

There remains widespread disgust at the way in which the junta responded to last autumn’s protests, which began as demonstrations against an increase in fuel prices. Its decision to send in troops to break up the crowds left an official death toll of ten, but dissidents and other sources say that the figure is probably ten times that.

Since Mr Gambari’s last visit, the junta has surprised many observers by promising a May referendum on a proposed new constitution and even a general election in two years’ time. Many view it as an entirely empty pledge and analysts say that it remains doubtful that the great majority of Burmese will be properly enfranchised by the gambit.

With less than three months to go before the public is to vote on the constitution, nobody beyond the tight inner circle of General Than Shwe’s Government has clapped eyes on any of its content.

“Without input from the public and opposition parties, the process fails to be a real step toward democracy,” said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “Gambari should tell the generals that marching a fearful population through a stage-managed referendum will not advance democracy or reconciliation in Burma.”

Many recall the last time elections were held in Burma — a 1990 poll that produced a resounding triumph for Ms Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy. Despite the massive margin of victory, the junta — in power since the early 1960s — ignored the result and the Nobel laureate was condemned to more than a decade of house arrest.

Ms Suu Kyi’s political future is at the heart of Mr Gambari’s mission: a visit that he said would stretch for “as long as necessary” as he struggles to meet a wide variety of groups.

The UN envoy is expected to push the junta on the draft of the new constitution — a document prepared without the input of substantial ethnic groups, of the NLD or of Ms Suu Kyi herself. That exclusion was itself a feature of junta-imposed rules for how the constitution was prepared — rules that banned Ms Suu Kyi from high office because her late husband was British.

The first post-crackdown visit by the US envoy generated some hope of a breakthrough but Mr Gambari, along with other senior foreign diplomats in Burma, has grown visibly irritated with the regime’s failure to deliver on its promises. There have been few signs that General Shwe is interested in talks with Ms Suu Kyi, and previous suggestions that he might engage directly with her quickly fizzled-out.

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president