Burma's Junta Plays Hard Ball as West Wavers

PARIS -- When a kangaroo court in Rangoon slapped an additional sentence on the already incarcerated pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the world winced. To be sure there was the perfunctory outrage, especially in Europe where French President Nicolas Sarkozy called the sentence on this Nobel laureate “a brutal and unjust verdict.” And the European Union presidency demanded her “immediate freedom without conditions.”