Myanmar, October 03: Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi held a rare meeting with a minister from the ruling junta on Saturday, a government source said, a week after she offered to work for withdrawal of sanctions on the country.
The detained Nobel laureate met Aung Kyi, the junta’s Labour Minister assigned two years ago to act as a liaison between Suu Kyi and the ruling generals, at her lakeside home.
“The meeting lasted about 50 minutes, but I don’t know what was discussed,” an official from the Home Ministry, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
Suu Kyi last week made a formal offer to the regime to help negotiate with Western nations to lift sanctions on the country, which critics say have been largely ineffective.
The United States on Tuesday held talks with representatives of the Myanmar government but emphasised that the lifting of sanctions would be a mistake.
Aung Kyi, who is also the junta’s Relations Minister, has met with Suu Kyi on six previous occasions, the last time in January 2008.
The meeting came a day after a Yangon court upheld its guilty verdict on the National League for Democracy (NLD) leader for a security breach committed in May, meaning she will remain under house until after next year’s elections.
NLD spokesman Nyan Win said it was likely Suu Kyi and Aung Kyi discussed the offer made by Suu Kyi in a letter to junta supremo Than Shwe last week.
“We don’t yet know exactly what was discussed, but we welcome this dialogue,” he told Reuters.
Suu Kyi, 64, the daughter of the late Myanmar independence hero Aung San, has been in detention for 14 of the last 20 years, mostly held at her home next to the Inya lake.
Critics say her latest stint of house arrest, for allowing an American intruder to stay for two nights at her home, was a ploy to keep her away from next year’s polls and minimise her threat to the regime, which has ruled for almost five decades.
—-Agencies