Advance Edited version... Summary: "In its resolution 2005/10, the Commission requested the Special Rapporteur to report to the General Assembly at its sixtieth session and to the Commission at its sixty-second session. The Special Rapporteur thereby submitted an interim report to the Assembly in accordance with this request (A/60/221). The present report is also submitted in accordance with the above request and is based on information received by the Special Rapporteur up to 22 December 2005. It is to be read in conjunction with his last interim report. Throughout the six-year period of his mandate, the Special Rapporteur received substantiated reports of grave human rights violations on an ongoing basis. Little evidence was available of the existence of a serious commitment by the Government to addressing the culture of impunity for State actors, with the vast majority of his communications to the authorities not receiving a response. With regard to the transition process, the National Convention, having been suspended for a further nine months following its last session held from 17 February to 31 March 2005, was reconvened on 5 December 2005. The Special Rapporteur was deeply dismayed to learn that no progress towards instituting genuine democratic reform has been made since the previous session. The Special Rapporteur regrets that, according to information received during the last reporting period, the situation regarding the exercise of fundamental human rights and freedoms remains grave. The intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of civilians for peacefully exercising their civil and political rights and freedoms continue. Members of registered political parties, human rights defenders and pro-democracy advocates are particular targets. The activities of political parties remain severely repressed and subject to scrutiny by government agents. The offices of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won over 80 per cent of the seats in the 1990 election, have been shut down, with the sole exception of the headquarters in Yangon. Members of NLD and other political parties are susceptible to harassment and imprisonment on a continuous basis. On 27 November, the Government issued a new executive order prolonging the detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for a further six months. The General-Secretary of NLD and Nobel Peace Prize laureate has now been in detention for over 10 of the last 16 years. The Special Rapporteur is gravely disturbed that a legitimate political leader continues to be held hostage in solitary confinement. To date, the total number of political prisoners in Myanmar is estimated to stand at 1,144. Amongst those behind bars are students, monks, teachers, journalists and elected members of parliament. The number of releases during the reporting period was negligible, while the number of civilians arrested continued to rise. The Special Rapporteur draws attention to the marked decline in socio-economic conditions, which has resulted in increased poverty countrywide. Urgent reform is required to prevent any further degeneration of an already severely damaged economy. The humanitarian situation in Myanmar, while not yet at the point of acute crisis, has shown marked signs of deterioration over the past year. In 2001, soon after the Special Rapporteur took up his mandate, the heads of eight United Nations agencies in Yangon expressed their concern over the "silent humanitarian crisis in the making". The situation then was particularly serious in ethnic minority and conflict areas. It has since significantly deteriorated, affecting the population now on a wide scale. The human rights concerns enumerated in the present report are largely the same as those which the Special Rapporteur highlighted when he commenced his mandate, six years ago. Despite early indications from the Government that it was willing to address these problems, he regrets that all such willingness appears to have disappeared. The Special Rapporteur stressed that human development and economic reform must be prioritized in order to defeat the poverty that is at the root of Myanmar?s many problems. Rational management of the economy and substantially enhanced budgetary allocations for the protection of economic, social and cultural rights continue to be essential priorities for tackling those problems. Any progress towards resolving ethnic conflict in Myanmar is unlikely to be possible or sustainable without tangible political reform. The ongoing armed conflict in several ethnic minority areas continues to underpin the most grave human rights abuses in the country and to exacerbate Myanmar?s humanitarian decline and long-standing state of socio-economic underachievement. Without an inclusive reform process, such urgent challenges for the country will not be addressed by the Government?s current road map process. No transition process is worthy of the name as long as fundamental freedoms of assembly, expression and association are denied; voices advocating democratic reform are silenced; elected representatives are imprisoned; and human rights defenders are criminalized. No progress will be made towards national reconciliation as long as key political representatives are being locked behind bars, their constituents subject to grave and systematic human rights abuses and their political concerns disregarded."