Suu Kyi's house arrest okay, says Thai PM

Bangkok (Reuters) Thailand has no problem with the prolonged house arrest in Myanmar of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said yesterday.

After a meeting in Bangkok with his counterpart from military-ruled Myanmar, Lieutenant-General Thein Sein, Samak said the former Burma's ruling generals had no plans to release 62-year-old Suu Kyi either before or after next month's constitutional referendum.

"They are not releasing her, but they will not interfere with her. They will put her on the shelf and not bother with her, which is unacceptable to foreigners," Samak, a vitriolic 72-year-old right-winger, told reporters.

"We think it's OK if she is put on the shelf. But others admire her because of it," he said.

Samak's comments are at odds with Bangkok's standard line that Suu Kyi's release would be welcome as part of moves towards democracy and political reconciliation in its pariah neighbour - a major supplier of energy to Thailand.

Oxford-educated Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero Aung San and as such the icon of the democracy movement, has been under house arrest or in prison for more than 12 of the last 18 years. Her last period of detention stretches back to May 2003.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a crushing election victory in 1990, with more than 80 per cent of the seats, only to see the junta ignore the result and refuse to cede any power.