Myanmar door ajar to junta-Suu Kyi talks

The door to talks between Myanmar's ruling generals and detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared to be ajar yesterday as Western powers piled pressure on the junta to begin a dialogue with the opposition.

Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) who initially rejected the junta's offer of talks as unrealistic, said it could clear the way for discussions about talks.

"We can say it is a significant improvement on the past situation. They have never committed themselves to talking to her," Nyan Win said.

Senior General Than Shwe, who outraged the world by sending in soldiers to crush peaceful monk-led demonstrations last week, offered direct talks if Suu Kyi abandons "confrontation" and her support for sanctions and "utter devastation".

Myanmar analysts caution against optimism as hopes of change in the past have been dashed so often in 45 years of military rule, punctuated by the army killing 3,000 people in crushing an uprising in 1988.

Two years later, the NLD won a landslide election victory which the generals ignored. Suu Kyi has spent 12 of the past 18 years in detention.

A global day of demonstrations against the suppression of the pro-democracy protests failed to spark in Asia yesterday, although about 1,500 people marched through central London.

A rally in Tokyo was cancelled and one in Bangkok attracted only around 100 people. Dozens of Buddhist monk s and women demonstrated outside the Myanmar and Chinese embassies in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.