NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is likely to meet President Thein Sein for the first time, an official said Friday, in the latest sign the regime is reaching out to its opponents.
The Nobel laureate, who was freed from seven straight years of detention in November, will join Thein Sein and other officials at an economic development workshop that starts on Friday in the capital Naypyidaw, the official said.
"The president will also attend so the two are likely to meet," the government official told AFP, asking not to be named.
"It will be the first time if the two meet," a second official said.
Sources in the dissident's National League for Democracy Party (NLD) confirmed that Suu Kyi had left her home in Myanmar's former capital of Yangon by car on her way to the capital on a journey arranged by the authorities.
The 66-year-old, who has spent much of the last two decades in detention, 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.
The NLD, which won a 1990 vote but was never allowed to take power by the junta, boycotted last year's poll because of rules seemed 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 nominally civilian government is softening its stance towards its critics, with Suu Kyi holding a second round of talks with labour minister Aung Kyi on Friday of last week.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
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