Suu Kyi 'not satisfied' with junta talks

Yangon: Detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is frustrated at a lack of talks on political reform with the ruling military junta since last year's bloody crackdown on dissent, her party said yesterday.

After a rare meeting between the Nobel peace laureate and leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD), spokesman Nyan Win said Suu Kyi held out little hope that unprecedented international pressure on the generals would bear fruit.

"Let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst," he quoted her as saying, adding she worried that yesterday's 90-minute meeting, and another immediately afterwards with junta liaison minister Aung Kyi, might give rise to "false hope".

Suu Kyi also told her colleagues she feared she was being strung along by the junta, a group of generals who have turned promise-breaking into an art form, not least by ignoring their humiliating 1990 election defeat.

"She is not satisfied with meetings with Aung Kyi and with the lack of any time frame," Nyan Win said.

In another sign of junta intransigence, NLD number two Tin Oo, who like Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since May 2003, was barred from attending the meeting, held at a government guest house under heavy armed guard.