For all the talk of change in the international approach to Myanmar these days, there is one area in which there is unlikely to be change any time soon - the top of its ruling military junta.
The veteran aid workers and diplomats who are starting to talk up the need to ease sanctions against the junta urgently and engage it more widely acknowledge that if this does happen it will be despite, rather than because of, the generals at the top.
'The signs we are getting from within is that the very top is just as paranoid and contrary as ever,' said one UN official at the core of efforts to find better ways of delivering aid and assistance to the country, now the poorest in Southeast Asia.
'Even the most enlightened officials we are dealing with - and there are some good people in the government - remain terrified of passing bad news up the chain of command. Decisions are slow and ever more tightly controlled, and even the good guys find themselves having to implement and do things they know to be wrong.
'You could say there is no change ... but that still doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about new approaches. The problems in the countryside are just too great.'
An election next year is expected to change little in terms of ultimate control, given that the constitution enshrines military rule.
At the top of the heap is Senior General Than Shwe, the former psychological-warfare officer who has shut himself away within the gilded confines of Naypyidaw, the purpose-built capital he ordered cut from the jungle to better secure the country's rulers.
