Myanmar orders further year house arrest for Suu Kyi

Myanmar's military junta imposed a further year of house arrest on opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday despite stiff international pressure for her release, a government source said.

As her previous six-month term of detention expired, the former Burma's ruling generals quashed hopes the 60-year-old would be freed by stepping up security outside her Yangon home. Armed police and barricades prevented any traffic from passing.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said a military official had visited Suu Kyi on Friday to discuss conditions the junta wanted to attach to her release - in all probability restrictions on her freedom of movement, the source said.

"As far as we know, the plan to lift her house arrest became abortive when the talks between the regime representative and her failed on Friday morning," the source said.

Diplomats and members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) had been cautiously optimistic after Suu Kyi's meeting a week ago with a senior United Nations official - her first contact with an outsider in over two years.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan made a direct appeal to junta supremo Than Shwe to free "The Lady", as she is known.

"I am relying on you, General Than Shwe, to do the right thing," Annan said on Friday.

Suu Kyi has spent more than 10 of the past 16 years behind bars or under house arrest. Her latest stretch of detention started "for her own safety" on May 30, 2003, after clashes between her supporters and pro-junta demonstrators.

Since then, she has been held virtually incommunicado with her telephone line cut and no visitors allowed apart from her housemaid and her doctor.

Despite the setback, the NLD went ahead with a ceremony to mark the anniversary of 1990 elections in which it humiliated the junta at the ballot box, winning 392 of 485 parliamentary seats.

The military, which has run Myanmar under one form or another since 1962, refused to accept the result and cede any power.