They have been sticking to the same negotiating routine for almost two decades now — shrugging aside each attempt by the international community to coax them into trying something a little more progressive. So where does this week’s visit to Myanmar by the UN’s envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, fit into this ponderous dance floor diplomacy?

It is tempting — and usually safe — to assume the worst about Myanmar’s inflexible rulers. True, they did allow Gambari to meet again with Aung San Suu Kyi. They even let him deliver a statement on her behalf, and then agreed to let Myanmar’s jailed democracy icon talk to members of her own National League for Democracy party, for the first time in three years. They also released hundreds of recently detained protesters, quite possibly for Gambari’s benefit. But consider what they did not do.

Myanmar’s senior general, Than Shwe, declined to even meet Gambari, and his government rejected a UN mediation strategy out of hand. It refused to cancel plans to expel the UN’s local representative, Charles Petrie, for daring to state the obvious — namely that many Burmese families are struggling to make ends meet and that September’s demonstrations were a reaction to this fact.

A government minister publicly rebuked Gambari for failing to persuade the US to lift sanctions. And let’s not even mention September’s shocking violence, and the continuing detention of Suu Kyi, and many other peaceful activists.

Plenty of observers are convinced, with good reason, that Myanmar’s military government is simply buying time, and hoping that international attention will drift elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the authorities can push ahead with their own “seven-stage roadmap” to what they refer to as “discipline-flourishing democracy” — a slow, deeply controversial process, widely condemned as a sham, which is supposed to involve a referendum on a new rubber-stamped constitution, followed by elections. The likely aim would be to cement the military’s pre-eminence firmly and “democratically” into a new charter, which the government could then brandish at their critics abroad.

Aung San Suu Kyi must be well aware of these risks. Which is why this week’s statement, reiterating her long-standing willingness to hold talks with the generals, included the key sentence: “I expect that this phase of preliminary consultations will conclude soon so that a meaningful and timebound dialogue with the SPDC leadership can start as early as possible”.

In other words, what she meant was that the opposition was not going to let itself get bogged down in another meaningless charade: she was emphasising the need to agree fast to a water-tight formula for these negotiations, and a strict timetable. There is really no way of telling what will happen now. Outside pressure may help. US “smart” financial sanctions against individuals and companies inside Myanmar are clearly rattling some people in government — particularly, diplomats say, middle-ranking officials.

But fast progress seems unlikely. And that is probably the key. The idea that Myanmar’s junta will conveniently collapse is simply not plausible — then again, no-one predicted the monks’ uprising.

Any democratic transition is likely to require sustained international pressure — by no means guaranteed given the views of China, India and Russia — probably over many years.

Myanmar’s generals are not the types to learn a new dance. Perhaps the best anyone can hope for is that, over time, they may at least be pushed into taking two steps back and three steps forward. Here, to end with, are a couple of conflicting views of the way ahead. The first comes from a commentary in Myanmar’s New Light of Myanmar newspaper — a government mouth-piece with a taste for North Korean-style rhetoric.

And here is a very different perspective from the Thai-based Irrawaddy newspaper. “If there are no larger-than-life leaders at the head of the Burmese protests, it is because the men and women on the streets are learning to become leaders all on their own. And that is why those who are fixated on a quick end to this long-running saga can’t see the birth of Burmese democracy. We can already hear the baby cry; its smile can’t be far behind.”

BBC News