AFTER SIX weeks of bravery, hope and defiance, the streets ofRangoonwere sullenlyquiet yesterday,amid growingfearsthat Burma'sgenerals havecrushedthe biggest challenge to their rule in two decades in the only way they know how; by using massive lethal force.

The uneasy lull in the violence came asUnitedNationsenvoyIbrahim Gambari flew into Burma yesterday hoping to persuade its ruling generals to use negotiations rather than guns to end mass protests against 45 years of military rule.

Although the official death toll from the latest crackdown was nine, Burmese dissidents based in Thailand fear at least 200 people were killed over three days of repression in Rangoon alone, when soldiers with automatic weaponsshot down unarmed civilians who had dared to call for freedom. Hundreds more were beaten by the regime's uniformedthugsandaround700 arrested. Truckloads of protesters were rounded up and held in a race track used as a temporary jail.

Last night, there were reports that 1000 monks have been incarcerated in Rangoon's infamous Insein Prison and thenearbyGovernmentTechnology Institute compound. It was also claimed that some of the monks involved in the peaceful protests have already been sentenced to six years in jail.

But with phone networks jammed and internet connections cut it is becoming increasingly difficult to find out what is happening inside the country. Reports leaking out from dissidents speak of manhunts by secret police and government thugs, who have also been searching hotels for foreign journalists.

With street demonstrators beaten into submission, for now at least, the security forces appear to have switched tactics to raiding monasteries and sweeping for dissidentleaders.

On Friday, there were cat-and-mousechases on the side streets of Rangoon, where toughworking-class protesters still taunted soldiers.

"F***you,army.Weonlywant democracy," some yelled in English. "May the people who beat monks be struckdownbylightning,"others chanted in Burmese.

There was little sign of the monks. Rangoon's two great pagodas - Sule and Shwedagon, their rallying points - were ringed with barbed wire and surrounded by soldiers. There was a similar scene in the second city of Mandalay, home to many of Burma's more than 400,000monks,wheretroopsalsosurrounded major monasteries.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the democracymovementsince1988, remained under house arrest, cut off from her supporters by a small army ringingherhome.Nonewleaders appear to have emerged yet from the ranks of those taking part in the current uprising, which could be a potentially serious problem.

Manyoftheactivistswhocould provide leadership are now in prison, and by yesterday most of the demonstrations appeared to have petered out.

"I don't think that we have any more hope to win," said one young woman, disillusioned that the clergy were no longer marching. "The monks are the ones who give us courage."

Monasteriesthatwerecentresof protest are now occupied by soldiers, while curfews and fear of the army kept much of the population off the streets yesterday. Many residents only ventured out to hurriedly buy groceries.

The regime is clearly determined to use whatever level of violence it chooses tosnuffoutwhatremainsofthe battered democracy movement before it can reignite its protests, and the generals seem oblivious to mounting international outrage at the public display of a tyranny they usually try to hide.

"Peace and stability has been restored," state-run newspapers declared yesterday. Security forces had handled the protests "withcare,usingtheleastpossible force", they claimed.

TheUSbrandedthecrackdown "barbaric",butapart fromannouncing new travel sanctions on regime members it is not clear exactly what the superpower can do about a regime which seems indifferent to pressure.

In a rare concession the junta agreed to admit the UN special envoy yesterday, raising hopes he could persuade them to stop the repression.

"He's the best hope we have. He is trusted on both sides," said Singapore foreign minister George Yeo. "If he fails, then the situation can become quite dreadful."

But nobody seriously expects the generals to negotiate with their opponents - they only seem capable of responding with brute force.

Monks inside Burma insisted they would not give up. Some spoke of a "united front" of clergy, students and activists, determined to struggle on, and anyprotractedcivildisobedience campaign by the clergy could prove deeply problematic for the generals.

To many Burmese, though, last week's crackdown has been horribly reminiscent of the 1988 massacre in which at least 3000 died. That ended hopes of bringing democracy to the world's last true military dictatorship for 20 years.

Although there were apparently not asmanydeathsduringlastweek's repression, it may have a similar effect, perhapsturningBurmaintoAsia's version of Zimbabwe - a failing state run by a tyranny which is deeply hated by its people but too strong to be removed by them.

Some human rights campaigners fear there could be more killing in the next days and weeks, not on the streets but quietly,awayfrompublicgazeor journalists' cameras.

The Burmese people understand the daunting scale of the task they have set themselves. Many of those who risked death last week in Rangoon's streets had little real expectation that the "saffron revolution" could succeed. Anger and despair drove them to challenge their rulers anyway.

There was a desperate hope too, which briefly blossomed as monks joined forces with taxi drivers and office workers. For a few exciting days it looked as if peaceful protest, led by monks, could bring an end to 45 years of military misrule.

That hope now appears dashed. It looks as if the saffron revolution has been decisivelycrushed,althoughstreet protests may rumble on for weeks and massivedemonstrationscouldyet reignite if Burma's angry population loses its fear of the army. In 1988, the year the regime came close to falling, protests and street battles raged and waned for months before growing to a crescendo.

The popularuprisingsthatinspired the Burmese protesters swept away the old men in the Philippines, Thailand and IndonesiaasAsia'swindsofchange blewinthe1980sand90s,ending dictatorships which had seemed unassailable. In one Asian dictatorship after another the rulers lost their nerve and the powerful switched horses when popular pressure became too great, yet somehow Burma's generals have held back what looked like the forces of history. At the moment, with their opponents dead, in jail or in hiding, Burma's generals simply look too ruthless and too entrenched in power for their regime to crumble.

In their paranoid, private world, the generalsgenuinelybelievetheyare defending their nation from a dire threat. State-run newspapers and radio stations repeatedly brand the protesters agents of enemypowers, although there is no foreign threat.

Mary Callahan, an expert on Burma from the University of Washington, said the generals see handling the protests in brutally simple terms.

She said: "The risk of not cracking down is infinitely greater than the risk of cracking down. What we've seen in the last two days is a very clear message they are moving to put down what they consider a threat to the nation."

Yet the generals may not be as strong as they seem, and last week's events could still be their undoing. Never before has the outside world been forced to take their tyranny so seriously. Neighbouring countries like Thailand, which have long been embarrassed by their brutality but have rarely done anything about it, seem genuinely horrified by last week's events. TheAssociationofSoutheastAsian Nations expressed "revulsion" over the killings. Real pressure could finally be applied - and the generals routinely visit Bangkok and Singapore for medical treatment and shopping trips. They keep their money in Singapore's banks and educate their children in its schools.

What may be a far more important factor in their demise is that by attacking monks they may have gone too far in the eyes of their own supporters.

WHATEVER happens nextin Burma's struggle for freedom, much could dependon whathappens within the military - whether it can keep its nerve, stay united and keep control over the huge army of conscripts whose families have suffered from their mismanagement as much as anyone else.

The soldiers in the Burma Army - or at least its ruthless officer class - show little concern at slaughtering their ethnic enemies in the endless warfare in the hills, yet they have been employed in the last week in killing monks in their own cities - a terrible crime that damns any Buddhistandwhichcouldfatally damage the regime's lingering credibility among its own supporters.

Guy Horton, a British human rights activist who has long experience in the country, said: "It has become a conflict between good and evil now. Monks are threatening the army with excommunication. For a Burmese Buddhist there is nothing more terrifying than that. It is difficult for Westerners to understand. It is like being expelled from the human race. Without a monk to pray for them their soul will go to hell."

What effect this could have on junior officers, or soldiers who are already troubled by shooting down their own people, remains to be seen.

TheBurmaArmy-calledthe Tatmadaw-hasalwaysbeena formidablydisciplinedand ruthless force but there have been splits in the past, usually the result of personal power struggles. Western diplomats yesterdayindicatedthattheremaybe serious discontent within the army's ranks over the killings. In the 1988 uprising, service personnel began joining the protesters - the trigger for the massacre.

Dominated by Burmans, the ethnic majority, the army has fought tough ethnic rebels for 50 years, showing little compulsion about slaughtering civilians. But not all its personnel may have the same bleak view of the future. Bar-room gossip in Rangoon's hotels speculates endlessly that younger officers may clear out the old ones, tired of their mismanagement and eager to open the country for business and an economic boom like that in next-door Thailand.

In practice there are no liberal army officers, but with its reputation dishonoured by slaughtering monks, and perhapsunderpressure from their embarrassed friends in Beijing, there may be army officers willing to get rid of Than Shwe, the 74-year-old leader who is believed to be stricken with cancer.

A widely distributed video of his daughter's lavish wedding earlier this year - at a time when the country is mired in poverty and many suffer the effects of hunger - has made the usually secretive leader a figure of popular hatred.

Change at the top might not mean much, though, if he is pushed out and another hardline general takes over.

The old dictator Ne Win was simply replaced with another general after 1988 and economic conditions since then have got even worse.

It will be difficult for the junta to face stepping down, however. Apart from the fabulous perks of their misrule, there is the prospect of facing the people's revenge as Nicolae Ceausescu did on his fall from tyranny in Romania. Fantasy images of Than Schwe being hanged are posted on the internet, a reminder that he does not only face oppositionfrom peace-loving monks.

If the regime does not step down in a negotiated settlement, or if it falls in conditions of anarchy and looting as many think a likely endgame, widespread bloodshed and even a resumption of Burma'slong ethnic civil war are possibilities.

Fornow, though,the military is firmly in charge and its opponents are mostly in hiding. Whether it can survive for much longer and what happens next is anybody's guess.