Top UN official to meet Myanmar's Suu Kyi

(AFP) – 

YANGON — A senior UN official will meet Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi during a two-day visit to Yangon this weekend, a government official in the military-ruled country said Friday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, will also hold talks with the leader of the army-backed party that has claimed victory in this month's election, said the official, who did not want to be named.

Suu Kyi was released from seven straight years of house arrest on November 13, less than a week after a poll that her party boycotted because of rules that appeared to exclude the dissident from participating.

A source at her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which has been officially disbanded because of its decision to shun the election, also confirmed the planned meeting between Nambiar and Suu Kyi.

The visit follows tension between Myanmar's regime and the United Nations in the run-up to the vote, which Ban called "insufficiently inclusive, participatory and transparent".

The UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, has proposed a commission of inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country.

His latest report to the UN, which Myanmar categorically rejected, highlighted more torture deaths in the nation's prisons, indiscriminate army killings in areas under rebel control and forced labour.  

Earlier this month a UN General Assembly committee passed a resolution condemning human rights violations in Myanmar, which the country called "seriously flawed".

Ban visited Myanmar last year but was not allowed to see Suu Kyi, who at the time was locked up and facing charges of breaching the terms of her house arrest.

He held talks with the Nobel Peace Prize winner this month on the telephone soon after her release and both stressed the need for Myanmar to release an estimated 2,200 political prisoners still languishing in the country's prisons.

Suu Kyi, who spent much of the past 20 years under house arrest, was locked up and sidelined during the country's first election in 20 years. Her party won the previous vote in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.

Soon after her release the activist addressed crowds of jubilant supporters, but she has been careful not to antagonise Myanmar's generals directly.

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