Myanmar authorities yesterday gave Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition party the green light to rejoin mainstream politics, paving the way for the Nobel laureate to run for a seat in the new Parliament.

The announcement in state media follows a series of reformist moves by a new military-backed government dominated by former generals, who are now reaching out to political opponents and the West.

Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was stripped of its status as a legal political party by the junta last year after it chose to boycott a rare election, saying the rules were unfair.

A brief announcement in the official New Light of Myanmar newspaper yesterday said that the country’s election commission had approved the National League for Democracy’s application to re-register as a political party.

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