U.N. chief irked by Myanmar leaders ahead of vote

File photo of U.N Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as he speaks about the situation in Myanmar at U.N. headquarters in New York February 23, 2009. Ban Ki-moon on Monday expressed frustration with Myanmar's military junta, saying they have ignored his efforts to engage the Southeast Asian nation ahead of this year's election.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday expressed frustration with Myanmar's military junta, saying they have ignored his efforts to engage the Southeast Asian nation ahead of this year's election.

Myanmar's now-defunct National League for Democracy party (NLD), led by long-detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, said in March that it would boycott the polls over "unfair and unjust" election laws and imprisonment of many of its members in the country formerly known as Burma.

"In Myanmar, my special adviser (Vijay Nambiar) and I are deploying every effort to continue to engage with the authorities," Ban told reporters during a monthly news conference.

He said that his concerns include the elections planned for this year, which opposition leaders, human rights groups and Myanmar's neighbors are worried will be rigged.

"It is a source of frustration ... that Myanmar has been unresponsive so far to these efforts" to engage it, Ban said. "A lack of cooperation at this critical moment represents nothing less than a lost opportunity for Myanmar."

Last week the chairman of the pro-democracy Union Democracy Party (UDP), Phyo Min Thein, resigned over his concerns about this year's long-awaited elections.

He said the election laws were too strict and had been drafted in a way that ensured a party backed by the junta would win most house seats and prolong its grip on power.

Myanmar has not yet set a date for its first multi-party election in two decades, but says the polls will take place this year and will be free, fair and inclusive.

Suu Kyi's NLD won the last election in 1990 by a landslide but the junta refused to hand over power.

Critics have already derided this year's election as a sham to entrench nearly five decades of military rule and say a constitution passed in 2008 reserves only a limited role for politicians who are not allied with the regime.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau, editing by Cynthia Osterman)