Myanmar's Suu Kyi says 'time for healing' after junta meeting 16 hours ago

YANGON, Myanmar (AFP) — Detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is optimistic after meeting Friday with a junta official and believes it is time for the "healing process" to start, her party said.

The pro-democracy leader also met with members of her National League for Democracy for the first time in more than three years amid hopes of a thaw in relations with the generals who crushed street protests against their rule in September.

Aung San Suu Kyi met with three senior party members -- Aung Shwe, Lwin, Nyunt Wai -- and spokesman Nyan Win before meeting with Labour Minister Aung Kyi, whom the generals appointed as a go-between following international outrage at their deadly crackdown.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said she believed the ruling authorities have the will for national reconciliation," Nyan Win said in a statement read out to reporters after the meetings.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said the bad events in September and October were sorrowful, not only for the NLD, but also for the government and the people," Nyan Win said.

"She said we have to work for the healing process first. We also discussed the necessary things to achieve the healing process," he said, adding that he could not release details.

Junta leader Senior General Than Shwe had previously offered dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi but on condition that she drop her support for international sanctions, which have been further tightened since the September crackdown.

"Regarding these demands, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said she will try to get a solution for these demands," Nyan Win said.

Asked to compare a previous meeting in 2004 and Friday's, Nyan Win said: "This time the discussion is more optimistic and more workable," adding that it was also Aung San Suu Kyi's view following her meeting with Aung Kyi.

"The main thing we discussed is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi asked for suggestions from us regarding the dialogue process and we discussed the suggestions, Nyan Win said, adding he could not disclose details.

"We will continue to work with Major General Aung Kyi from now on," he said.

The meetings follow UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari's six-day mission to Myanmar, which he said had led to progress towards establishing a dialogue between the junta and the country's pro-democracy movement.

Aung San Suu Kyi, in a statement read out by Gambari in Singapore, said she was willing to cooperate with the junta, which has ruled Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, for the past 45 years.

"In the interest of the nation, I stand ready to cooperate with the government in order to make this process of dialogue a success," she said.

It was the first such pledge since she was last put under house arrest in 2003.

Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of independence hero General Aung San, has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon.

She welcomed the appointment last month of Aung Kyi as the government's go-between, describing October 25 talks with him as "constructive".

"I expect that this phase of preliminary consultations will conclude soon so that a meaningful and timebound dialogue with the SPDC (government) leadership can start as early as possible," said Aung San Suu Kyi, widely known as "The Lady."

Any dialogue with the junta would be "guided by the policies and wishes" of her party, but she would also need to consult with other groups and ethnic minorities, according to her statement read by Gambari.

The Nigerian diplomat met Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday after warning the junta against a return to the status quo that existed before the mass pro-democracy protests were put down.

His mission ended without a meeting with junta leader Senior General Than Shwe, although the UN envoy met several officials and NLD members.

The pro-democracy protests began in mid-August after a massive hike in the price of everyday fuel, but escalated into the biggest threat to the generals in nearly 20 years when Buddhist monks emerged to lead the movement.

London-based human rights group Amnesty International said Friday Myanmar's military rulers were keeping 700 political prisoners in detention, 91 detained in the generals' bloody crackdown on protests in September. It demanded their immediate release.

Suu Kyi Resigned to Myanmar House Arrest By AYE AYE WIN – 7 hours ago

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Friday that she is "very optimistic" about the U.N.-promoted effort to start talks between the military government and pro-democracy forces, but appeared resigned to remaining under house arrest.

Suu Kyi made her observations in a meeting with top executives of her National League for Democracy party, who were allowed contact with her for the first time in more than three years.

Suu Kyi looked "fit, well and energetic like before. She is full of ideas," said party spokesman Nyan Win, who attended the hour-long meeting at a government guest house along with three top party members. Suu Kyi was taken to the guest house from her home nearby where she is kept under house arrest.

Their meeting, held far from the public and press, was permitted by the government after U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on Thursday completed a six-day visit to Myanmar to promote a dialogue between the ruling junta and Suu Kyi.

Nyan Win, speaking after he and his colleagues met for about an hour with Suu Kyi, said the 1991 Nobel peace laureate believes the military authorities now have the will to achieve national reconciliation.

He said she told her fellow party leaders that the government's crackdown on September's mass pro-democracy demonstrations was "devastating for the NLD, the government and the people."

"She said a healing process such as the release of political prisoners is essential," according to Nyan Win. Myanmar held more than 1,100 political prisoners before the crackdown, and the number now is difficult to estimate. Thousands of people have been rounded up since late September, though the government says most have been released.

Suu Kyi also held talks with Aung Kyi, who was appointed the junta's "minister for relations" with the former Nobel Peace Prize winner last month amid the severe worldwide criticism of the junta.

Appearing to concede that she will remain detained for the immediate future, she told her colleagues that she will ask for two liaison officers of her choice to help her communicate with them. She said she will also ask Aung Kyi to make arrangements so that she can see the other party leaders whenever necessary.

Suu Kyi has been in government detention for 12 of the past 18 years, and continuously since May 2003.

The government unexpectedly announced Thursday night that Suu Kyi would be allowed to meet with her party's top officials.

Its statement, broadcast on state radio and television, came just hours after the U.N.'s Gambari ended his second mission to broker negotiations between the military regime and pro-democracy leaders.

Gambari met with Suu Kyi for an hour Thursday and released a statement on her behalf after leaving the country. It was apparently her first public message since her latest detention began in 2003.

"In the interest of the nation, I stand ready to cooperate with the government in order to make this process of dialogue a success," Suu Kyi said in her statement, which Gambari read aloud Thursday evening in Singapore.

Her message also slightly prodded the junta, officially known as the State Peace and Development Council, to move more quickly in dealing with her, saying she hoped that preliminary consultations with Aung Kyi could be concluded soon "so that a meaningful and time-bound dialogue with the SPDC leadership can start as early as possible."

The roots of Myanmar's crisis are in the military's refusal to hand over power after Suu Kyi's party won a 1990 general election. The junta now says it is following a seven step "road map" to democracy that is supposed to culminate in free elections, though it has not set a time line for the process.

In the streets of Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, residents said they were hopeful that Suu Kyi's meeting would lay the groundwork for reconciliation. "Conditions have been created to move forward," said Ohn Myint, a 67-year-old lawyer.

With the reconciliation process in its earliest stage, Myanmar experts are cautious about its prospects.

"My reaction is extreme skepticism that this will lead to real dialogue between her and the (junta), or genuine political change," said Donald M. Seekins, a Myanmar expert at Meio University in Japan. "The (government) likes to move Suu Kyi and the NLD around like pieces on a chessboard, to satisfy the international community."

(This version CORRECTS the analyst's name to Seekins.)

Hints of a thaw in Myanmar by Thomas Fuller  (9-Nov-2007)

BANGKOK: The pro-democracy leader in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, met Friday with members of her party for the first time in three years as well as with a representative of the military government, which since its violent crackdown on demonstrators in September has telegraphed alternating signs of combativeness and flexibility.

Nyan Win, a spokesman for her party, the National League for Democracy, said Aung San Suu Kyi believed that the military government was "serious and really willing to work for national reconciliation," Reuters reported.

Analysts say they are watching to determine whether the ruling generals' outreach to Aung San Suu Kyi is genuine or whether it falls into a well-established pattern of short-lived concessions toward dissidents followed by a return to a hard-line stance. Myanmar has been under military rule for 45 years.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said Friday that the government would continue to carry out democratic change, as promised in a convention in July. The convention set up guidelines for a constitution that the junta said was the first of a seven-stage process to establish what it called a disciplined form of democratic rule. But the meeting came 14 years after the first constitutional convention, and the junta has given no time frame for the overall process. The government will "continue striving earnestly for national reconsolidation in true cooperation with the UN Secretariat," said the paper, which is closely read by diplomats and analysts seeking hints to the secretive government's intentions.

Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations envoy who ended a six-day mission to the country Thursday, said the government and its political opponents had agreed on a "process" that would "lead to substantive dialogue."

But it is a reflection of the glacial pace of change in Myanmar that allowing Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with her colleagues passes for progress.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, who has been held under house arrest on and off since 1990, said in a statement released by the UN late Thursday that she was willing to "cooperate" with the military government in the "interest of the nation."

She said she would represent "as broad a range of political organizations and forces as possible," not just her party.

This may be out of necessity, analysts say. The National League for Democracy, which won the 1990 elections that were ignored by the military, has been reduced to a skeletal party after many of its leaders were harassed, jailed or fled the country.

"She's got a pretty weak hand," said Sean Turnell, a specialist on Myanmar at Macquarie University in Sydney. "So many people have been arrested, she's isolated, she's been imprisoned for 19 years, her husband has died, her children have grown up without her. That's got to wear you down."

Aung San Suu Kyi has been called to negotiate with the generals several times over the past 17 years, sometimes in secret. None of these talks has persuaded the military government to begin relinquishing their control.

So far there is little to suggest that these negotiations are different, said Win Min, a lecturer in contemporary Burmese politics at Payap University in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.

"They are just making procedural concessions," Win Min said. "These are not real negotiations."

But there are also signs that the military government is taking Aung San Suu Kyi more seriously. Win Min noted that the junta had stopped dismissing her as "irrelevant" in state media accounts, the word used to describe her for years.

Most analysts agree that the crackdown on monks has left deep scars in Myanmar society and that this separates the current moves toward reconciliation from previous efforts.

Anger over the crackdown, especially the arrests and beatings of monks, may have also led to cracks within the government, especially among younger officers in the military. Win Min said he had heard reports of lenient treatment from recently released leaders of the September demonstrations.

"They thought they would be very hurt," he said of the released dissidents. Instead, he said, the military officers told them: "We are just doing our jobs. We are not going to torture you."

MizzimaBurmese.com