Senior UN official Ibrahim Gambari met detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a Yangon guest house on Saturday, her first contact with an outsider in three years, a government source said.
The meeting followed an audience between Gambari and Than Shwe, the ruling military junta's supremo, in his new jungle capital. It lasted about an hour, according to the source, who asked not to be identified. There were no further details.
Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi, 60, has been in prison or under house arrest for the last three years, her telephone disconnected and all visitors barred apart from her housemaid and doctor.
Gambari, under-secretary-general for political affairs, is the first senior UN official in two years to be allowed into the former Burma, which has been under military rule of one form or another since 1962.
Suu Kyi's brief trip to Gambari's government guest house sparked immediate hopes inside her National League for Democracy (NLD) party she might be released soon. She has been under house arrest for more than 10 of the last 16 years.
"This makes us optimistic," said NLD spokesman U Lwin. "Slowly, slowly, catch the monkey."
According to one Yangon-based diplomat briefed by Gambari, Than Shwe had agreed to "try to find common ground with the NLD on political issues" - a stance echoed by the opposition and Suu Kyi.
The diplomat said Than Shwe had also told Gambari Yangon would "explore ways" to give humanitarian UN missions and aid groups better access to the impoverished south-east Asian nation.
On Thursday, US President George W. Bush renewed broad sanctions against Yangon for failing to take any recognisable steps towards restoring democracy or improving its record on human rights.
"These actions and policies are hostile to US interests and pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States," Bush said in a message to Congress.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda echoed the US call for reform on Friday by urging major Myanmar trading partners China, India and South Korea to use their influence to coax the secretive regime to allow more democracy. Gambari has not spoken to reporters during his three-day visit, which ends on Saturday.
The Nigerian envoy had also been expected to query the junta about what appears to be their biggest offensive against the Karen minority ethnic group in a decade.
Thousands of Karen, a mainly Christian ethnic minority making up around 10 percent of the population, have fled to the Thai-Myanmar border since December to escape what some described as genocide at the hands of the SPDC, as the junta is known.
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