Aung San Suu Kyi met with senior members of her party

By MARK McDONALD, The New York Times.
December 17, 2009.

HONG KONG — The military junta in Myanmar allowed the opposition leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, to meet with senior members of her party on Wednesday, the latest in a recent series of signals that suggest the junta might be responding to diplomatic overtures from the West.

A Western diplomat in the main city of Yangon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi was permitted to leave her home under military guard to meet with three elderly leaders of her National League for Democracy. She has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years.

The meeting took place at a state guesthouse in Yangon, formerly Rangoon. She had not been permitted to confer with her party colleagues in nearly a year.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had requested the meeting in a letter to the leader of the junta, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. She also requested a meeting with the general himself.

Despite her continuing detention, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi has been able to meet in recent months with a number of visiting diplomats, including a high-level delegation from the United States led by Kurt M. Campbell, an assistant secretary of state, and his deputy, Scot Marciel.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration undertook a review of American policy toward Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and decided to seek a new approach, including direct talks with the junta.

“A policy of pragmatic engagement with the Burmese authorities holds the best hope for advancing our goals,” Mr. Campbell said in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in October. “A central element of this approach is a direct, senior-level dialogue with representatives of the Burmese leadership.”

But Mr. Campbell said a wide array of sanctions against Myanmar would not be immediately relaxed, and improved bilateral relations depended on the government’s making “real progress on democracy and human rights,” a demand reiterated by President Obama at a regional summit meeting last month in Singapore.

While in Singapore, Mr. Obama sat in a meeting near the prime minister of Myanmar, Gen. Thein Sein — the first time an American president had met with a member of the military junta.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi met for 45 minutes on Wednesday with the National League for Democracy chairman, Aung Shwe, 92; the party secretary, U Lwin, 87; and another senior official, Lun Tin. The elderly leaders of the party are known collectively in diplomatic circles in Yangon as “the uncles.”

Their meeting, which U Lwin discussed with reporters afterward, took place less than a week before the highest court in Myanmar was scheduled to begin considering an appeal of the 18-month extension of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s longstanding house arrest. That extension, which was handed down in August, came after an American man swam to her lakeside home in May, evaded military guards and briefly stayed at the house — a breach of the terms of her detention.

One of her lawyers, Kyi Win, said this month that the hearing would most likely be a procedural affair. But a successful appeal and a lifting of her detention could allow Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi to play a role in national elections that the junta has vowed to hold next year.

Analysts and diplomats say the country’s new Constitution virtually ensures the continuing dominance of the military in the political life of the country, despite the election. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi would likely be barred from running for office because her husband, who died in 1999, was a foreigner.

Her party won a landslide victory in national elections in 1990, and she was elected prime minister. The election results were annulled by the junta, which has continued to govern ever since.