As he flew out, there was no word on whether Gambari’s single meeting with the 74-year-old Senior General, who rarely pays heed to the outside world, had persuaded him to relax his iron grip or start talks with Suu Kyi, whom he is believed to loathe.

Gambari arrived in Singapore on Tuesday and was due to meet the city-state’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, on Wednesday, a Singapore government statement said. It provided no further details.

The U.N. office in Yangon said Gambari would return to New York to report to the U.N. Secretary-General. In a statement, it said he met Than Shwe and other members of the senior junta leadership to “discuss the current situation in Myanmar.”

Gambari also met Suu Kyi, the statement said. It provided no further details.

Witnesses reported slightly fewer troops on Yangon’s streets on Tuesday, but raids on homes by pro-junta gangs looking for dissident monks and civilians suggested Gambari’s nascent “shuttle diplomacy” and international calls for restraint had made little difference.

“They are going from apartment to apartment, shaking things inside, threatening the people. You have a climate of terror all over the city,” a Bangkok-based Myanmar expert with many friends in Yangon said.

U.S. charge d’affaires Shari Villarosa told Reuters by telephone from Yangon arrests continued throughout Gambari’s mission.

“We have heard that arrests are continuing at night, like at two o’clock in the morning. We’ve heard it’s the military. I don’t know who is doing it, but people are going around in the middle of the night and taking people away,” she said.

“People are terrified. This government keeps power through fear and intimidation and they are trying to intimidate people to stay off the streets.”

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won a massive election landslide in 1990 only to be denied power by the army, said 130 of its members and other activists had been detained.

In another sign the army is confident it has squashed its most serious threat since a 1988 uprising, it cut two hours off a curfew imposed last week during monk-led protests against decades of military rule and deepening economic hardship.

The barbed-wire barricades have also gone from Yangon’s Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, the focal points of demonstrations which filled at least five city blocks at their height.

Gambari flew to Naypyidaw, the new jungle capital of the country formerly known as Burma, to convey international outrage at last week’s military crackdown, which prompted “revulsion” in Southeast Asian neighbors and a rare Chinese call for restraint.

Having met three minister generals and Suu Kyi at the weekend, the former Nigerian foreign minister was made to wait until Tuesday for his audience with Than Shwe, a delay that did not augur well for those urging reconciliation.

The U.N. Security Council, which endorsed Gambari’s emergency visit, had hoped for some sort of dialogue between a military that has been in charge for 45 years and 62-year Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, in detention for nearly 12 of the last 18 years.

Western governments say the death toll in the crackdown is likely to be far higher than the 10 officially acknowledged when troops opened fire to clear protesters from the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital and main city.

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