Yangon - United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari left Myanmar Tuesday after being snubbed for the second time by the country's top leadership.
Gambari departed on a Silk Air flight to Singapore Tuesday evening. He was scheduled to fly Tuesday to Naypyitaw, the military's headquarters 350 kilometres north of Yangon, but cancelled the trip for unknown reasons.

On his last trip to Myanmar in August, Myanmar's junta chief Senior General Than Shwe refused to meet Gambari, prompting opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to also deny the special envoy an audience.

Yangon  - United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on Monday met Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi at a government guesthouse in Yangon, official sources said.

The meeting lasted about one hour and 20 minutes, witnesses said. The content of the talks was not immediately revealed but should be disclosed later Monday when Gambari was scheduled to meet with members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, Myanmar's main opposition party.

Yangon - The European Commission has agreed to provide 40.5 million euros (52.4 million dollars) in humanitarian aid to Myanmar this year, with some of it aimed at assisting the Rohingya Muslims who are living "in terrible conditions," officials said Tuesday.

Of the 40.5 million euros allocated, some 22 million will go to assisting communities hard hit by Cyclone Nargis, which left 140,000 people dead and affected 2.4 million others in March 2008.

Yangon  - Myanmar has released San Dar Win, a daughter of the country's former dictator Ne Win, from six years of house arrest in her lakeside home in Yangon, relatives confirmed Saturday.

"She was visiting her friend's house after her release," a relative told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. She was released on Friday.

Yangon  - The two pivotal events for Myanmar in 2008 - Cyclone Nargis and a national referendum - fell on the same month, highlighting the ruling junta's callousness in pursuing its "discipline flourishing democracy" at all costs.

Myanmar's military this year demonstrated to the international community its extreme indifference to public welfare by pushing through a national referendum on a new constitution to cement its future political powers on May 10 - days after the cyclone slammed the Irrawaddy delta and Yangon, leaving almost 140,000 dead and missing and 2.4 million people in desperate need of assistance.

Yangon  - Myanmar's military regime has taken initial steps towards opening an embassy in oil-rich Kuwait as a part of its policy of enhancing diplomatic relations with the Middle East, diplomatic sources said Tuesday.

A high-ranking delegation from the Myanmar Foreign Ministry, led by Deputy Minister Maung Myint, recently visited Kuwait for preliminary discussions on the reciprocal opening of embassies in both countries, according to Yangon-based diplomatic sources.

Myanmar established diplomatic ties with Kuwait on December 16, 1998. Kuwait was the 73rd country to establish diplomatic ties with Myanmar, once known as Burma, since the country won independence from Britain in 1948.