YANGON, Myanmar - The military government released 50 members of Myanmar's pro-democracy party on the same day it met with their leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a response to international pressure over the crushing of peaceful demonstrations, a party spokesman said Friday.
Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. envoy trying to broker a compromise between Suu Kyi and the junta, told reporters in Japan that the meeting was a good beginning. "But it's only the first step, so this should lead to early resumption of talks that will lead to tangible results," he said.
The junta, meanwhile, deployed hundreds of riot police with assault rifles and tear gas in Yangon in an apparent attempt to forestall any demonstrations exactly one month after the government began its violent suppression of the protests by Buddhist monks, activists and ordinary citizens.
Security was especially tight at the eastern gate of the Shwedagon pagoda, where monks were beaten as police broke up a protest on Sept. 26. Barbed wire was erected around the area while police and pro-junta thugs took up positions near the Sule Pagoda in the heart of the city and other sites of earlier protests.
There were no signs of unrest as thousands of pilgrims thronged Shwedagon and other pagodas at the end of the Lent period, an important Buddhist holiday when monks can leave their monasteries to travel after several months of monsoon season retreats.
But a local reporter who tried to take a photo of pilgrims at the Shwedagon was immediately surrounded by about a dozen riot police. One officer confiscated the memory card from his camera.
The junta is under considerable international pressure to make at least goodwill gestures after halting the peaceful demonstrations, which began Aug. 19 over government fuel price increases and mushroomed into a broad-based movement for democratic reforms that attracted tens of thousands of people in Yangon.
The government said 10 people were killed when troops met the mass protests with gunfire last month, and about 3,000 people were detained. The junta says most have been released. Dissident groups put the death toll at up to 200 and say 6,000 people were detained, including thousands of monks.
There are many reports of detainees being mistreated in custody.
Ten monks and 50 members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy were among 70 people freed Thursday from the infamous Insein Prison in Yangon, said Nyan Win, a spokesman for the party.
Among those released was Hla Pe, an 82-year-old party executive, Nyan Win said, adding that at least 250 party members remained in detention.
Suu Kyi, detained since 2003, met Thursday with a newly appointed Myanmar government official as part of a UN-brokered attempt to nudge her and the military junta toward reconciliation.
It was her first known meeting with retired Maj. Gen. Aung Kyi, the labor minister who was appointed Oct. 8 as the government liaison to the Nobel Peace prizewinning pro-democracy leader. State TV reported that the two met for more than an hour at a government guest house, a few minutes from where the residence where Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since May 2003.
State media showed Suu Kyi meeting Aung Kyi in circumstances usually accorded visiting dignitaries. Some residents and Western diplomats suggested the move was merely aimed at easing pressure on the junta.
The government announced this month that junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe was willing to meet with Suu Kyi -- but only if she met certain conditions, such as renouncing support for foreign countries' economic sanctions against the military regime.
Than Shwe has met Suu Kyi once, in 2002.
