Today, like most days, Aung San Suu Kyi will sit and wait. She will spend the day with the two women she has been detained with since 2003.

That she is being held in a "guesthouse" in the grounds of Rangoon's Insein jail, as opposed to her lakeside house where she has spent the past six years, makes little difference; she has no television, radio or phone. But today is special, and for the most dismal of reasons. It is the 5000th day of her incarceration.

Ms Suu Kyi is being held at the prison, having been charged with violating the terms of her house arrest after a mysterious American swam to her home and spent the night there.

In truth, the only crime committed by the graceful opposition leader was to win an election two decades ago. Even now, the junta is terrified that this slight 64-year-old widow has the power to do something they have never been able to do: lead and unite the people of Burma without the threat of force. That is why she is kept a prisoner, out of sight but never out of mind.

Yesterday, in a move that underlined the regime's fear about Ms Suu Kyi's latent power, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was refused permission to speak with her.

On a controversial visit to Burma to try to convince Senior General Than Shwe to release more than 2000 political prisoners and restart dialogue with the opposition, Mr Ban said his request for a meeting with Ms Suu Kyi had been turned down.

"I pressed as hard as I could. I had hoped that he would agree to my request, but it is regrettable that he did not," he told reporters.

"I am deeply disappointed that they have missed a very important opportunity."

The high-profile snub came after the UN head had initially asked General Than Shwe for a meeting with the detained opposition leader during two hours of talks on Friday evening in the remote administrative capital, Naypyitaw.

He was made to wait overnight for the decision and was then told that a meeting would be impossible because the opposition leader's trial was ongoing.

As he last night left Burma empty-handed, having met with foreign ambassadors in Rangoon, the Secretary General faced renewed criticism from campaigners and members of the international community - Britain among them n who believed that he should not have gone. Many warned that by coming away with nothing, Mr Ban was merely providing the regime with a propaganda coup.

Yet others were not surprised, not least by the generals' decision not to allow him to visit Ms Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide election victory in 1990 only for the result to be ignored by the junta. It was at that time that the opposition leader was first imprisoned, for a period of three years. She was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.