UNITED NATIONS — In a rare public statement, Myanmar’s detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday that an initial round of talks with Myanmar’s ruling military has made progress and that she looks forward to regular meetings with a government envoy to press for greater political freedom in her country.
“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 read by U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari in Singapore.
Myanmar’s government responded by announcing that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate – under house arrest for much of the past 18 years – will be allowed to meet with other leaders of her political party, the National League for Democracy, for the first time in more than three years. The party easily won the country’s 1990 general election, but the results were nullified by the military.
Thursday’s developments provided a relatively upbeat conclusion to a U.N. diplomatic mission to Myanmar. A day earlier, U.N. delegates voiced concern that Gambari’s six-day visit might end in failure because the Myanmar leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, had refused to meet with him.
Gambari pressed the government to release political prisoners and to allow greater freedom to a broad array of political, religious and ethnic groups.
Washington reacted with skepticism to the latest Myanmar announcement. “What needs to happen in Myanmar is that there needs to be a serious, sustained, peaceful, democratic dialogue,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “That is not something that we have seen.”
