YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will consider positively a heavily conditioned offer to meet the junta leader, her party said Friday, as a US envoy headed to meet leaders of the isolated regime.
The ruling generals made the offers of dialogue as the United Nations readied to discuss the violent crackdown on the largest pro-democracy demonstrations in almost 20 years in the country formerly called Burma.
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past 18 years under house arrest, is a living symbol of the pro-democracy movement that last week brought up to 100,000 people onto the streets of Yangon.
While the top general, Than Shwe, is known to despise her, Myanmar’s state media late Thursday said he was willing to see the Nobel peace prize winner if she ends her support for sanctions against the regime.
Aung San Suu Kyi would consider the offer “in a positive light,” said Nyan Win, a spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD).
“It’s up to Daw (Ms) Aung San Suu Kyi to decide,” he said.
The regime extended the rare offer of talks as UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari prepared to brief the UN security council on his four-day trip this week to Myanmar, during which he met both the top general and the opposition leader.
The US chief of mission in Myanmar, Shari Villarosa, was Friday due to pass on a “very clear message” in her talks with the generals to start “meaningful” dialogue with the opposition, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Villarosa — whose government has spearheaded global protests against Myanmar — was invited by the regime to its remote capital Naypyidaw but had received no word on whom she would meet, US officials said.
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose NLD won 1990 elections by a landslide but was never allowed to rule, continues to symbolise the nation’s democratic aspirations.
Last week, she was briefly allowed to greet some of the country’s revered Buddhist monks before the junta came down hard on the protesters, killing at least 13 people and detaining more than 2,000, according to state media.
The rallies had begun with small-scale protests after a massive mid-August hike in fuel prices but swelled into the biggest threat to the hardline regime since student-led demonstrations in 1988, which were put down in a massacre.
Although the security presence on Yangon’s streets has eased, soldiers continue to enforce a curfew and raid activists’ home overnight, residents say.
Many Yangon monasteries are empty, leaving neighbours to wonder if the monks have been arrested, injured or worse.
Amid this week’s flurry of international diplomacy, Gambari was due to brief the UN Security Council later Friday on his four-day mission to Myanmar, but China signalled early that it would block efforts to punish Myanmar.
China’s UN Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose country, along with India, has close ties to Myanmar, said Thursday that Beijing still regarded the crisis there as an internal matter and rejected the idea of punitive measures.
“No internationally imposed solution can help the situation,” Wang said.
India, which has been under fire for its low-key reaction, called for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, saying she can “contribute to the emergence of Myanmar as a democratic country.”
Thailand’s Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont and Singapore’s Premier Lee Hsien Loong agreed to send some foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to Myanmar next month, a Thai government statement said.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner also said he would soon travel to the Southeast Asia region to press for change, while Brazil unveiled plans to send a team of observers.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, called on Myanmar to allow rights monitors to enter the country, pointing to “pretty alarming” signs of abuses.