Myanmar's Suu Kyi meets UN envoy, sticks to terms

Myanmar's Suu Kyi meets UN envoy, sticks to terms
Mon Feb 2, 2009 6:48pm GMT
By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari on Monday during his mission to try to coax her and the military junta towards talks on political reform.

Crushing any hopes of a breakthrough or compromise, a spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD) said the party was sticking to a list of preconditions before it will sit down with the former Burma's ruling generals.

Spokesman Nyan Win said the terms include the release of all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, a review of the new constitution and the honoring of results of the 1990 election.

Suu Kyi's NLD won a landslide victory at the polls, only to be denied power by the military that has run the country since a 1962 coup. The NLD believes the 1990 results must be the basis for any political settlement.

Nyan Win said Suu Kyi dictated similar conditions for a rumored visit by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to Myanmar to inject some life into the non-existent reform process.

"The minimum requirement is the release of all political prisoners," Nyan Win quoted Suu Kyi as telling Gambari at the meeting, which included five senior NLD members and lasted more than an hour.

Ban's spokeswoman Marie Okabe was asked by reporters in New York whether the secretary-general planned to visit Myanmar soon. She declined to confirm a visit but said Gambari would be meeting Ban, who is due to tour Pakistan and India this week, in the region to discuss the envoy's talks in Myanmar.

According to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), 2,162 people are now behind bars on account of their political or religious beliefs.

Gambari can at least take heart that Suu Kyi agreed to see him. On his last visit in August, she refused to meet him despite being held under house arrest since May 2003.

Analysts believe her snub was to show displeasure at the tacit acceptance by the United Nations of planned 2010 elections in Myanmar as the basis for future political reform, rather than the 1990 vote.

Gambari is due to head to the junta's remote new capital, Naypyidaw, on Tuesday.

There was no word on whether he will meet aging junta supremo Than Shwe, who is known to loathe Suu Kyi so much that he once stormed out of a meeting with a foreign diplomat when the envoy mentioned her name.

New elections are scheduled for 2010 under the final stages of a seven-step "roadmap to democracy" drawn up by the junta. A new constitution guaranteeing the army control of the country was passed in a heavily criticized referendum last year.