Myanmar military opens door to dialogue
YANGON, Myanmar - Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met today with an official from Myanmar’s ruling junta. Leaders of her opposition party entered the meeting place shortly afterward, their first direct contact with her in more than three years.
The Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi was driven from her heavily guarded home in a car with tinted windows to a nearby government guest house, said witnesses, speaking on condition of anonymity because they could face harassment from the government.
An Asian diplomat, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said Suu Kyi met with junta official Aung Kyi, whom the junta named “minister for relations” with Suu Kyi last month amid global outrage over its brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
The junta unexpectedly announced Thursday that Suu Kyi would be allowed to meet with party officials from her National League for Democracy. The statement came just hours after U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari ended a six-day mission to broker negotiations between the military regime and pro-democracy leaders.
Suu Kyi, who previously had rejected conditions the government placed on talks, said she was ready to sit down with the military junta.
“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 a statement released on her behalf by Gambari.
Previously, the government has said it would not negotiate with Suu Kyi unless she dropped her calls for international sanctions against Myanmar. It was not clear whether she had agreed to do so, or whether the government had withdrawn that precondition.
Today’s meetings were the most significant progress to come from Gambari’s most recent effort to persuade the government to engage opposition parties instead of cracking down on peaceful protests.
Although Gambari was able to meet junta officials and Suu Kyi for the second time since a bloody crackdown in September, top leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe snubbed the U.N. envoy on this visit. The government also did not release political prisoners and civilians detained after recent demonstrations, as Gambari had asked.
An hour before his departure Thursday, Gambari met Suu Kyi.
“We now have a process going which will lead to a dialogue between the government and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” Gambari told reporters when he landed in Singapore. “Such a dialogue is a key instrument in promoting national reconciliation and the goals of peace and democracy and full respect for human rights in Myanmar.”
Gambari will report the results of his visit to the Security Council next week and plans to return to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in the next few weeks.
Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for four years and has spent 12 years in detention since her party won the 1990 elections and more than 80 percent of the parliament’s seats. The junta overturned her victory.
Than Shwe reportedly refuses to speak with Suu Kyi, and won’t even say her name. Gambari has said that in discussions about her, he refers to the democracy leader simply as “The Lady.”
The government’s agreement to negotiate with Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders is a sign of conciliation after intense international pressure for its mass arrests and violent crackdown on monks and protesters in the past two month.
Material from the Associated Press and Los Angeles Times was included in this report.