Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met the country's new civilian president for the first time on Friday, in the latest sign the regime is reaching out to its opponents. The one-hour meeting with President Thein Sein in the capital Naypyidaw marked a rare encounter between the Nobel laureate and one of the former top generals who kept her locked up for much of the past two decades.
"It is an important step for national reconciliation. We should all work together," Ko Ko Hlaing, chief political adviser to the president, told AFP ahead of the talks. The meeting was held behind closed doors at the presidential office, according to a government official and a member of Suu Kyi's entourage, but it was unclear what was discussed.
It was the democracy icon's first visit to the capital Naypyidaw, at the invitation of the government. The meeting comes five months after power was handed to a new nominally civilian government led by Thein Sein, a former general and junta prime minister, following nearly half a century of military rule. A Western diplomat in the army-dominated nation who did not want to be named described the dialogue with Suu Kyi as "significant" but said the government's motives were unclear.
The 66-year-old dissident was released from house arrest shortly after a November election that was won by the military's political proxies and marred by complaints of cheating. Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a 1990 vote but was never allowed by the junta to take power. The NLD boycotted last year's poll because of rules seemingly designed to exclude Suu Kyi, and was stripped of its status as a political party as a result. But more recently there have been signs that the new government is softening its stance towards its critics, with Suu Kyi holding two rounds of talks with labour minister Aung Kyi in Yangon in recent weeks.
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