Rangoon, the leafy capital of Burma, has sprouted a bit of a night scene. There are many new eateries, including a stylish Japanese restaurant, and dance clubs in shiny hotels now cater to tourists, businessmen and affluent locals. These days, though, the streets of the city are darkened, deserted and eerily quiet after sundown. "People are fearful that there will be trouble," explains a hotel receptionist.

A sense of impending trouble can be felt during the day too, as thick as the tropical humidity. Last week, some 200 students gathered near Rangoon University, shouting pro-democracy slogans and waving the red flag of the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Onlookers cheered, but riot police swiftly disbursed the rally and loaded students and even a few bystanders onto trucks. A smaller demonstration erupted afterward at the Yangon Institute of Technology, which also was broken up. They were the first such rallies since two weeks of demonstrations at the end of 1996 and a possible sign that the eight-year standoff between Suu Kyi and Burma's military regime is entering a more tumultuous phase.

That, apparently, is how the generals see it: at midweek they closed all approaches to the gilded and diamond-encrusted Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma's most sacred shrine. Suu Kyi gave a famous speech there in 1988, and authorities don't want it to become Rangoon's own Tiananmen Square. They also summoned two of Suu Kyi's deputies and officially warned them to "avoid acts which will undermine stability and peace."

It's a standoff that neither side is likely to win. Suu Kyi is demanding that the ruling junta belatedly recognize her party's victory in 1990 parliamentary polls, which would make her the country's leader. "The time is not only ripe," she said in a recent taped address smuggled out to Radio Free Asia, "but in fact it is long overdue." But the generals have no such plan. After releasing Suu Kyi from six years of house arrest in 1995, they have ignored her pleas for a power-sharing dialogue in the apparent hope that she will fade into irrelevance. (Suu Kyi has consistently avoided a call for a popular uprising, fearing the violence that could result.) The military regime also started liberalizing the economy, hoping a trickle of prosperity would placate the populace.

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