U.N. Official Visits Suu Kyi, Asks Ruling Junta to Free Her

The first U.N. official to visit Myanmar in two years said Wednesday that he had asked the military government to release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and that the junta might be ready to reengage the world.

Undersecretary-General Ibrahim Gambari met with Suu Kyi for about 45 minutes last week during a three-day visit to the isolated country, also known as Burma.

Suu Kyi, 60, the leader of the opposition National League for Democracy, has been held in prison and under house arrest for more than 10 of the last 17 years. Her latest term of detention will end Saturday. Authorities have previously renewed the term when it expired, but Gambari, who also met with government officials, said the junta might be considering her release.

“There seems to be a willingness to turn a new page in its relationship with the international community,” he said of Myanmar’s ruling junta. “What better way to show it than to release her?”

Gambari said the government did not promise to release Suu Kyi and wouldn’t disclose how Sr. Gen. Than Shwe, the head of the junta, responded to Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s appeal to free her. But he called “significant” a statement by Myanmar’s police chief, Maj. Gen. Khin Yi, that Suu Kyi might no longer pose a threat to the regime’s stability because her following had dwindled.

Gambari’s visit, brokered in part by China, was a breakthrough. The previous U.N. special envoy, Razali Ismail, resigned in frustration this year after the government blocked his repeated attempts to visit.

Mounting pressure from the U.S. and a group of Southeast Asian countries, combined with the prospect that the U.N. Security Council might consider imposing sanctions against Myanmar, helped persuade the government to open the door a crack.

Last week, President Bush extended financial and other U.S. sanctions against Myanmar that have been in place since 1997. But Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said during a meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, that Washington was ready to improve relations with the nation if the ruling military party moved toward releasing political prisoners, especially Suu Kyi.

Democracy activists say the regime is holding more than 1,100 political prisoners, including some who have been detained for many years.

“We have called for her release. We have called for the release of the many hundreds, even thousands, of political prisoners. We’ve called for a resumption of dialogue,” Hill said. “If we see a movement in this direction, if we see an effort, of course we’ll respond.”

Gambari also came bearing the message that the U.N. was ready to help Myanmar with HIV/AIDS prevention, public health, agriculture and other development issues.

“Some doors have opened that were closed before,” Gambari said. “We have to try to widen those doors.”

Of his meeting with Suu Kyi, he said that she appeared well, but that she wanted to see her doctor more often. Her doctor is the only one allowed to visit her.

“I am not a medical doctor, but I said, ‘Are you well? Can I say you are well?’ ” Gambari recounted. “She said yes, but said she would like her visits from her doctor to be more frequent and regular.”

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts to bring about peaceful change in her country, is the daughter of Burmese independence leader Gen. Aung San. Her current period of detention began in May 2003 after a pro-government crowd attacked her motorcade in what might have been an assassination attempt.

She is being held at her family home in Yangon, the former capital. The military took control of Myanmar in 1988 after quelling a democracy movement. In 1990, it refused to hand over power after Suu Kyi’s party won an election in a landslide.

Gambari will brief the Security Council in more detail next week at the request of the United States, which wants to focus attention on Myanmar’s human rights violations and failure to move toward greater democracy. Recent unrest in the country has also become a regional issue, according to the U.N., which said a military operation in an area populated largely by ethnic Karen forced about 2,000 people to flee to Thailand in the last three months.

U.S. economic sanctions imposed after Suu Kyi’s arrest in 2003 have largely been ineffective because some countries, including China, India and Thailand, have continued doing business with the military regime.

Russia and especially China say they don’t consider Myanmar a threat to international peace and security. China would prefer to use its clout with the junta to quietly pressure it to change, rather than have to publicly defend the country before the Security Council. Democracy activists say they have seen no sign that China is using its influence to bring about political change.

Times staff writer Richard C. Paddock in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.