United Nations envoy meets Suu Kyi

UN special envoy Razali Ismail has met pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in his latest attempt…

UN special envoy Razali Ismail has met pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in his latest attempt to bring Burma's military rulers and the opposition together.

Razali, who arrived in Yangon on Monday, met Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize laureate, at her Yangon home where she has been confined since September.

"She is fine," Razali said without elaborating.

The veteran Malaysian diplomat declined to comment on that meeting or his one-hour session with Khin Nyunt earlier in the day.

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His last known talks with a senior Burmese official were in Thailand earlier this month when he met Foreign Minister Win Aung, who promised a regional meeting that the government would try to resume multi-party talks on a new constitution this year.

The constitutional convention was abandoned in the mid-1990s and reconvening it is a central part of the Burmese military regime's "road map to democracy" announced last year.

The generals have not set a date for it despite pressure from Thailand, which is following a policy of "constructive engagement" while the United States has imposed sanctions.

Nor have the generals, who have ruled the resource-rich country since 1962, said when they will lift restrictions on Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).

She was detained in May last year after a bloody clash between her supporters and government backers.

Suu Kyi was kept in an undisclosed location until September, when she was taken to hospital for an operation and then allowed to return to her lakeside villa in Yangon.

She has remained cut off there without a telephone and with visitors requiring government permission, saying she will not accept her liberty until all senior NLD officials are freed.