Dear Secretary General I am writing to urge you to take the lead on Burma and to renew efforts to pressure Burma’s generals to release all political prisoners. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release is very welcome but does not signify any political change in the country. There are still around 2,000 political prisoners in Burma. The international community should use the release of Aung San Suu Kyi as an opportunity to apply pressure on the dictatorship to enter into genuine dialogue leading to real democratic change. Your leadership is needed to secure dialogue between the dictatorship, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, and ethnic groups. However, no serious efforts are being made to secure such dialogue. I urge you to take the following steps to enact the mandate you have been given: Personally take the lead in UN efforts to secure negotiations. More than 40 visits by UN envoys have failed to secure a single concession from the dictatorship. The authority of the Secretary General himself is needed in this instance, as events after Cyclone Nargis demonstrated. To mobilise the international community to support you in efforts to secure dialogue. To ask the United Nations Security Council for a resolution giving you a stronger mandate to persuade Burma’s dictatorship to enter into dialogue. To ensure that unlike previous envoy-led efforts to secure dialogue, genuine ethnic representatives are included at every stage of the dialogue process. Yours sincerely