He left after 90 minutes and did not speak to reporters gathered outside. No details of the meeting were immediately available.By giving Pinheiro free access, the junta is apparently softening its position toward Suu Kyi amid reports that she and the top generals recently started reconciliation talks.Pinheiro's meeting with Suu Kyi was closely watched in the hope that he might obtain a firsthand account of the secretive reconciliation talks, the first face–to–face parleys between the two sides in six years.Neither side has divulged details of the talks, which started in October but were first reported in January by another UN envoy, Razali Ismail, after he was allowed to meet with Suu Kyi. Subsequently, a European Union delegation and a US official met the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate.Suu Kyi has been kept under virtual house arrest since September 22, when she defied a travel ban.Myanmar's current crop of generals seized power in 1988 after crushing a democracy uprising. They called national elections in 1990, which were won Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, but the generals refused to honour the results.During the last decade the junta has jailed hundreds of NLD members.But the generals, who have long reviled Suu Kyi for mounting an internationally acclaimed struggle for democracy, have in recent months toned down their criticism.Pinheiro, who was due to leave Myanmar later today, also met during his three–day visit with senior figures of the military regime and central executive committee members of the NLD.He has declined to give any details of his talks other than to describe his meeting with a top general as "very pleasant."Pinheiro, a Brazilian politics professor, had dinner yesterday with South-east Asian and Western diplomats but divulged little about his trip, which he described as "exploratory," according to one of the diplomats.Pinheiro was named the UN special human rights rapporteur in February, replacing Rajsoomer Lallah, a Mauritian judge who resigned in November, claiming he did not have the resources to carry out his task. Lallah had never been allowed into Myanmar since he took office in 1996.The junta had accused Lallah of being biased. In his reports to the United Nations, Lallah had been highly critical of the human rights situation in Myanmar.. Indonesian police have fired warning shots as stone–throwing Muslims mobbed a court house where three Christians were sentenced to death for inciting a massacre and other religious violence.

Indonesian police fired warning shots today as stone–throwing Muslims mobbed a court house where three Christians were sentenced to death for inciting a massacre and other religious violence.The Palu District Court in the town of Palu, in Central Sulawesi province, found the three guilty of training a gang of 700 Christians that attacked Muslim neighbourhoods in May last year.In one incident, 191 Muslims sheltering in a mosque were massacred. Hundreds of people were killed and villages destroyed when Muslim gangs retaliated in fighting that continued for one month.The violence had spread from the nearby Maluku islands, where fighting between Christians and Muslims has left thousands dead since it broke out in January, 1999.It was not immediately clear if the defendants' lawyers would appeal the verdict.Outside the courthouse, a mob of about 2,000 Muslims threw stones at the vehicles carrying the defendants to jail. Witnesses said at least one policeman was injured when he was hit by a rock.The crowd dispersed after security forces fired several warning shots.Meanwhile, in Indonesia's western Aceh province, fresh violence has left at least four people dead, police and rights activists said today.Two rebels were killed yesterday when a homemade bomb blew up as they were trying to plant it on a road near the town of Lhokseumawe, said northern Aceh's police spokesman Capt Abdi Darmawan.In eastern Aceh, 1,100 miles north–west of Jakarta, the bodies of two villagers were found yesterday, said human right activist Yusuf Puteh. Both corpses had bullet wounds.The deaths are believed to be linked to clashes between government troops and the rebel Free Aceh Movement.

The rebels have been fighting for an independent homeland on the northern tip of Sumatra island about since the mid 1970's. At least 6,000 people have been killed in the past decade.Indonesia's government and the insurgents entered into a cease–fire agreement last June, but it has failed to curb the fighting. Last month, the security forces sent extra troops to Aceh and announced it was launching a crackdown against the separatists.. Human rights group Amnesty International has urged the Sri Lankan government to prevent rape and torture of people arrested and held on suspicion of ties to Tamil Tiger rebels.