Myanmar’s Suu Kyi seeks to meet Western diplomats

YANGON, Myanmar — Detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is seeking permission from Myanmar’s government to meet with Western diplomats about having their countries lift sanctions against the military regime, her party said Monday.

The request came in a letter she sent Friday to junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe, stating her willingness to cooperate with the junta to have the sanctions lifted, said a statement from her National League for Democracy party.

Her position, originally announced last week, appears to signal a change in her attitude toward sanctions, which she had previously welcomed as a way to pressure the junta to achieve political reconciliation with the pro-democracy movement.

The U.S. and other Western nations apply political and economic sanctions against the military regime because of its poor human rights record, and failure to turn over power to Suu Kyi’s party, which won general elections in 1990.

Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, also a spokesman for her party, said last week that Suu Kyi has always declared that she will cooperate with the government on lifting sanctions.

However, Suu Kyi and her pro-democracy movement have always insisted on concessions from the government if they are to work together, particularly the freeing of political prisoners and the reopening of her party offices around the country that were closed by authorities.

Suu Kyi has been in detention for about 14 of the past 20 years, and was sentenced in August to a new 18-month term of house arrest. She has been in near-total isolation during the past five years, with visiting U.N. envoys the only diplomats allowed to see her.

In October 2007, Than Shwe said he would talk with Suu Kyi on condition that she renounced calls for international sanctions against the military regime and abandoned her confrontational stance.

Myanmar has been in a political deadlock since 1990 after the military refused to allow Suu Kyi to take power after her party swept elections. Several efforts to promote a dialogue between the pro-democracy movement and the government, heavily promoted by the United Nations, have failed.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week that the Obama administration will change Washington’s hardline policy and engage in direct high-level talks with the junta to promote democracy. She said U.S. sanctions against members of Myanmar’s leadership would remain in place but would be accompanied by outreach.

The army has ruled Myanmar since 1962.