By Aung Hla Tun
YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's ruling junta has rejected U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari's bid for three-way talks with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit, official media said on Tuesday.
Information Minister Kyaw Hsan told Gambari that such a meeting was premature and he warned that tougher international sanctions on the former Burma would only make matters worse.
"Myanmar will not bow to outside pressure. It will never allow any outside interference to infringe on the sovereignty of the state," state-run MRTV quoted Kyaw Hsan as saying during talks with Gambari in the new capital Naypyidaw.
The U.N. said Gambari "had very frank and extensive exchanges" with senior junta officials on the fourth day of a mission aimed at securing talks between Suu Kyi and the generals who crushed pro-democracy protests in late September.
He urged that dialogue "start without delay as an indispensable part of any process of national reconciliation, and the lifting of restrictions on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all political detainees as the necessary steps to that end," the U.N. office in Yangon said in a statement.
The statement made no mention of Gambari's request for three-way talks involving himself, Suu Kyi and General Aung Kyi, who met the Nobel laureate for 75 minutes last month after he was appointed the junta's liaison minister.
Kyaw Hsan said Suu Kyi had not responded to the conditions set for direct talks with junta chief Senior General Than Shwe, which included ending "confrontation" and her support for sanctions and "utter devastation" -- a term not defined.
"He asked Gambari to urge Aung San Suu Kyi to respond to it," MRTV said.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which won a massive election victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the army, has said any negotiations should have no prior strings attached.
Gambari was due to meet other top junta members and brief the diplomatic corps in Naypyidaw on Wednesday, but there was no word on an audience with Than Shwe.
Gambari expected to see Suu Kyi in Yangon, where she met him twice during his last visit after soldiers crushed pro-democracy protests in September, triggering international outrage. He also met Than Shwe on that trip.
Rumors that Suu Kyi had fallen ill swirled around Yangon on Tuesday, but NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the 62-year-old was "okay."
A source at Yangon's Asia Tawwin Hospital said Suu Kyi, who has spent 12 of the last 18 years in detention, had a minor operation to remove an ingrown finger nail and was returned to her lakeside home, where she is under house arrest.
The U.N. has said Gambari will stay in Myanmar as long as necessary to accomplish his mission, but his work has been complicated by the generals' move to kick out the U.N.'s top resident diplomat for highlighting the country's economic crisis.
However, the regime agreed to a visit by U.N. human rights envoy Sergio Paulo Pinheiro from November 11 to 15, the U.N. said in a statement, the first time he has received a visa in four years.
(Writing by Darren Schuettler; editing by Ralph Boulton)
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