U.N. rights envoy fails to see top Myanmar dissident

YANGON (Reuters) - The U.N.'s rights envoy to Myanmar said he failed to meet top dissident Min Ko Naing in Yangon's notorious Insein Prison on Thursday, the final day of a visit to probe September's bloody crackdown on democracy protests.

A diplomatic source had earlier incorrectly told Reuters that Sergio Paulo Pinheiro had managed to see Min Ko Naing, jailed since mid-August when the ruling military began to clamp down on protests against high fuel prices and falling living standards.

Pinheiro told reporters his visit to Insein had included meetings with social activists such as Su Su Nway, who was arrested on Tuesday, and the former Burma's longest-serving political prisoner, journalist Win Tin.

"He's always in high spirits, although he's 78 and has spent 18 years in prison," Pinheiro said at Yangon airport as he was about to depart for Thailand.

Apart from failing to see Min Ko Naing, Pinheiro said, his request to see detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi had also been refused.

The junta says all but 91 of the nearly 3,000 people rounded up in the crackdown have been released, although one Yangon-based diplomat said the number still in detention was around 1,000.

"The official figure is out by a factor of about 10," the diplomat said.

That estimate does not include the 1,100 prisoners of conscience the United Nations and human rights groups say were already being held before the protests started.

Official media say 10 people were killed in the crackdown, although Western governments say the real toll is likely to be far higher.

Min Ko Naing, Myanmar's most prominent political figure after detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, was freed in 2004 after 15 years in jail for leading 1988 student protests that were crushed by the army.

Once free, he continued to criticise the military which has ruled the country for 45 years.

He was among 13 dissidents arrested in August, accused of causing civil unrest and undermining peace and security, charges that could see them spend 20 years in prison.

Despite many reports of detainees being caged in animal-like conditions during September's crackdown, some of the "88 Generation Students", as Min Ko Naing's group is known, appeared to have been fairly well-treated, the Yangon-based diplomat said.

(Reporting by Aung Hla Tun and Ed Cropley; writing by Ed Cropley; editing by Michael Battye and Roger Crabb)