A mission to Burma

THE UNITED NATIONS special envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, is now en route for his seventh visit to that country, which has become a virtual prison camp under its military junta. Gambari's UN mandate is to gain the release of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, along with all other political prisoners, and to persuade the junta to include her National League for Democracy in an effort toward political reconciliation.

In his previous visits, Gambari failed to move the regime toward dialogue with the league, an opposition party that won over 80 percent of parliamentary seats in Burma's last free election in 1990 - a result the junta refused to honor. Worse yet, during his last visit Gambari foolishly asked the league to participate in the sham election that dictator General Than Shwe wants to stage in 2010. Under a rigged 2008 constitution, Suu Kyi would be prohibited from even voting, and 25 percent of Parliament seats would go to the military.

On this trip, Gambari should stick to his orders, demanding Suu Kyi's freedom and dialogue with her party. And if he is granted permission to meet with her, he should insist that she be allowed to confer first with party leaders who are not in prison.

In June, on the occasion of Suu Kyi's 63d birthday, Barack Obama saluted her, saying: "She has sacrificed family and ultimately her freedom to remain true to her people and the cause of liberty. And she has done so using the tools of nonviolent resistance in the great tradition of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King." Obama would be acting within that tradition if he aligned America with Burma's democrats and pressed Gambari not to deviate from his democratizing mission.