Aung Kyi meets with party members

BURMA'S detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi today met with top members of her party as well as with a government liaison officer.The talks lasted about 90 minutes and took place at a military facility near her lakeside home in Rangoon, where she has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest, an official said.

The Nobel peace prize winner was taken to and from her home in an official convoy, witnesses said. During the talks, she was allowed to speak with members of the Central Executive Committee of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and with the liaison officer, Labour Minister Aung Kyi, the official said. Aung San Suu Kyi was last allowed to meet with her party's leadership on November 9, when she spoke with four top party members for about one hour at the same military compound. The facility has also been the site of her four previous meetings with Aung Kyi, who was appointed as liaison officer in the wake of a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests in September. Their last talks were held on January 11. The talks came as the ruling military junta intensified the pressure on political dissidents. A popular blogger who belongs to the NLD was arrested along with another party member yesterday, apparently for defying the military's tough internet controls, party spokesman Nyan Win said.

Ten leaders of last year's protests have been also charged with violating the nation's strict publishing law, a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison, the party said yesterday. US State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey denounced the charges as ``further evidence that the regime is rejecting all efforts to promote dialogue and national reconciliation' '. The protests spearheaded by Buddhist monks in September were the biggest threat to military rule in nearly two decades. The United Nations says at least 31 people were killed during the suppression, and 74 remain missing.

Hoping to quell international outrage at the bloodshed, Burma made a series of conciliatory gestures, including allowing UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari and a UN rights investigator to visit the country. Mr Gambari made two trips to Burma, but when he requested to make a third this month, the junta pushed him off until April. Meanwhile censors have tightened controls on the media, banning one newspaper for a week over an article that said the government had backtracked on a huge hike in fees for satellite television. Another paper was placed under investigation over a love poem that carried a secret message calling junta leader Than Shwe "power crazy''.
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