Myanmar’s Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will travel to the US in September on her first visit since spending years under house arrest, a think-tank said yesterday.

Ms Suu Kyi, who was elected to Parliament this year in a dramatic sign of Myanmar’s reforms, has told the Atlantic Council she will attend its dinner in New York on September 21 to accept an award, said Taleen Ananian, speaking for the think-tank.

It would be the 67-year-old Ms Suu Kyi’s first visit to the US since the 1980s. She spent most of the past two decades under house arrest after a military junta refused to accept her party’s victory in 1990 elections.

Ms Suu Kyi did not travel abroad again until May this year, when she visited Thailand. Last month, she made an extensive tour of Europe, where she was feted in major capitals and admitted that she felt exhausted.

A State Department official said the US would welcome a visit by Ms Suu Kyi but had no announcement to make. It would be highly unlikely that Ms Suu Kyi would visit the US without meeting supporters in President Barack Obama’s administration and Congress.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited Ms Suu Kyi to visit when the top US diplomat paid a landmark visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in December.

The Atlantic Council dinner takes place in New York at the same time as the UN General Assembly, which each year brings leaders from across the world to the global body’s headquarters in Manhattan.

The Atlantic Council said it would present its Global Citizen awards to Ms Suu Kyi along with Japan’s Sadako Ogata, a former UN high commissioner for refugees.