Myanmar's leaders are not immune to pressure: Time has come to tighten the screws

First Lady Laura Bush, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and nearly all of the leaders of the democratic world want to bring Myanmar in from the cold. For too long -- 45 years -- a sternly repressive military leadership has denied fundamental freedoms and basic decency to about 50 million citizens.

Ever since her party's massive parliamentary electoral victory in 1990, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has mostly been kept under house arrest, and her key associates have been put in prison.

In October and November, the army in Myanmar (formerly Burma) pummeled thousands of protesting Buddhist monks. Tens of thousands had taken to the streets, hoping in vain that the reverence the clergy commands from ordinary Burmese would soften the government's harsh response. But the soldiers lashed out, bludgeoning some to death. The army now occupies monasteries and holds monks in its notorious prisons.

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