Suu Kyi to meet party colleagues

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar's military government announced that it will allow detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to meet her party's officials Friday, the first such meeting in more than three years.

The announcement on state radio and television news Thursday came hours after U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari left Myanmar, saying he had made progress in his six-day mission to promote a dialogue between the junta and Suu Kyi.
Aung Kyi, the government minister in charge of relations with Suu Kyi, will see her first to make arrangements for the meeting, state media said.
Suu Kyi has been detained since May 2003, and has not seen fellow executive members of her National League for Democracy since May 2004.
There had been signs that Gambari's trip did not go well, including his failure to be received by the junta chief, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, and the military government's rejection of Gambari's proposal of a three-way meeting involving Suu Kyi, a junta member and himself.

The government invited Gambari to return to Myanmar, and he expects to do so in the next few weeks, said a statement posted on the Web site of the U.N. Information Center for Myanmar at the conclusion of the envoy's visit.
The statement also said Suu Kyi, who has been detained continuously since 2003, has authorized Gambari to make a statement on her behalf, although it did not say when he would do so. Gambari met Suu Kyi for an hour just before his departure Thursday from Myanmar.

The statement would apparently be the first message from Suu Kyi since she was detained, and would be the first chance to gauge her reaction to September's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators and the U.N. mediation efforts afterward.

"We now have a process going which would lead to substantive dialogue" between the government and Aung San Suu Kyi, said the U.N. statement.
"The sooner such a dialogue can start, the better for Myanmar," said the statement, issued after Gambari departed for Singapore en route to U.N. headquarters in New York.

Ref: AP