September 29: United Nations: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan met with representatives of a dozen nations here on Wednesday to seek ways of pressing Myanmar’s military regime, in power for more than four decades, to move toward democracy.

Officials from the World Bank and UN Development Programme also attended the meeting, called on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly where Myanmar earlier vigorously defended the regime’s record on human rights.

“We will use the individual influence of each of the countries to see how they can help move the process forward,” Annan told reporters after the session. He said the goal was to “encourage” the government.

“The member states who came in here are all concerned about the issue,” Annan said.

In recent months, the UN chief has stepped up the pressure on Myanmar with statements critical of the junta’s national forum on democracy, which he said could not be credible without opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) has boycotted the national meeting and Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for more than a year, the third time the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner has been detained.

The forum is part of the regime’s “road map” for democracy, and a top Myanmar official earlier Wednesday warned that the nation’s fate could not be determined by one person alone — a reference to Suu Kyi.

“We cannot allow the national convention to be derailed under any circumstances,” Tin Winn, an official in Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt’s office, said in a speech to the 191-nation General Assembly.

“The future of the nation cannot be determined by one individual or one party acting alone,” he said.

Suu Kyi’s NLD won the elections in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in 1990 but the military rulers, who took power in a 1962 coup, refused to recognise the result.

Four NLD members were given seven-year jail terms last week, and a UN rights specialist outlined allegations of human rights abuses in a new report issued on Tuesday.

“Allegations of human rights violations in Myanmar are aimed at discrediting the government for political purposes,” Tin Winn told the assembly. “Myanmar has consistently cooperated with the United Nations on huamn rights.”

But the military rulers have not allowed either the specialist or Razali Ismail, Annan’s special envoy to Myanmar, to return to the country in recent months.

Razali attended Wednesday’s meeting along with representatives from Australia, Britain, France, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, current EU president The Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.

Annan’s spokesman later said the meeting had “strengthened the sense of common purpose on how to assist Myanmar in making its process of democratic transition more inclusive and sustainable.”

The spokesman said the UN chief was also urging Myanmar to “listen to advice given by friendly countries, in goodwill, and allow his special envoy to visit the country as soon as possible.”