Myanmar ? A U.N. envoy met with Myanmar’s military leader Tuesday in a bid to end the country’s political crisis, as the junta’s foreign minister defended a deadly crackdown on democracy advocates that has provoked global revulsion.

Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N.’s special envoy to Myanmar, met with Senior Gen. Than Shwe in the junta’s remote new capital, Naypyitaw, said a foreign diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing protocol. No details of the meeting were available.

Security forces lightened their presence in Yangon, the country’s main city, which remained quiet after troops and police brutally quelled mass protests last week. Dissident groups say up to 200 protesters were slain, compared with the regime’s report of 10 deaths, and 6,000 detained.

Gambari has been in the country since Saturday with the express purpose of seeing Than Shwe about the violence. The leader had avoided him until today.