Geneva: Myanmar’s persecution of political opponents is preventing any real transition to democracy, the United Nations’ special envoy for human rights in the country said Wednesday, a day after the military government criticized the United States for putting it on the U.N. Security Council’s agenda.

Independent U.N. expert Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told the Human Rights Council, the global body’s 47-nation watchdog, that the junta had authorized grave abuses, such as the targeting of ethnic minorities by its armed forces and a total crackdown on opposition leaders and activists.

He said the Southeast Asian country’s disregard for fundamental freedoms had made political change nearly impossible.

“The persecution of members of political parties in the opposition and human rights defenders shows that nowadays the road map for democracy faces too many obstacles to bring a genuine transition,” said Pinheiro, who was appointed by the former U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2001 to monitor the situation in reclusive Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Pinheiro’s comments contradicted the military regime’s claim Tuesday that it is steadfastly implementing a seven-step road map to democracy.

Foreign Minister Nyan Win told the U.N. General Assembly that his government has been unfairly targeted by the United States, and urged other countries to resist “powerful states” seeking Security Council action against Myanmar.

“The founders of the U.N. did not intend the world to become a forum where some members with political and economic clout could gang up against a member state and label it for what it is not,” Nyan Win said.

The country’s National Convention will resume work Oct. 10 on a new constitution. The junta calls the convention the first step in the road map toward democracy that is supposed to lead to free elections though no timetable has been set to complete the task.

Pinheiro said the arrest of political opponents, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, precluded any chance of “national reconciliation.” He also criticized the government, which has barred him from conducting fact-finding missions in the country since 2003, for permitting “numerous cases” of forced evictions and the military driving people from their homes, and for preventing the international Red Cross from visiting nearly 1,200 political prisoners.

Human rights groups and ex-prisoners say torture, poor food, little medical attention and brutal guards are common in Myanmar’s extensive network of prisons and labor camps. The government denies such charges, but has given no specific reason for suspending the ICRC’s prison visits.

“Grave human rights violations are indulged not only with impunity but authorized by the sanction of laws,” Pinheiro told the council. “The stability of Myanmar is not well served by the arrest and detention of several political leaders or by the severe and sustained restrictions on fundamental freedoms.

The one positive note in Pinheiro’s speech was recognition that the country had made some progress on combatting forced labor.

The military junta took power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy movement. It refused to yield two years later when Suu Kyi’s political party won a land-slide victory in general elections. The Nobel peace laureate has been held, mostly under house arrest, for about 10 of the last 17 years.

The National Convention was first convened in 1993, but its work was aborted three years later after delegates belonging to Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party walked out in protest, claiming the military was manipulating the proceedings.

The convention was resurrected in 2004, though Suu Kyi’s party continued its boycott. Its members have faced constant harassment.

Earlier Wednesday, three pro-democracy dissidents were arrested as the NLD marked its 18th anniversary in Myanmar’s capital of Yangon, according to activ-ists who declined to be named for fear of government reprisals.

Associated Press writers Paul Alexander at the United Nations and Aye Aye Win in Yangon, Myanmar, contributed to this report.