Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra expects Myanmar will release pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi before October when a major Asia-Europe meeting takes place, his spokesman said Friday.
"The Thai prime minister told his Vietnamese counterpart (Phan Van Khai) that he expected Aung San Suu Kyi would be released before October," spokesman Jakrapob Penkair told reporters here after Vietnam and Thailand held their first-ever joint cabinet meeting.
Thaksin expected the release of the Nobel peace laureate, who is under house arrest in Yangon, to come before the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit which takes place in Hanoi October 8-9, his spokesman said.
Last year in Indonesia, the ASEM foreign ministers came to an unprecedented agreement demanding that Myanmar "immediately release" the democracy icon and resume efforts towards national reconciliation and democracy.
Myanmar's reluctance to allow political freedoms has dogged relations between the two regions since the impoverished state joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997.
Myanmar and other ASEAN states Cambodia and Laos are not members of ASEM, a forum for consultations on key issues, but Thaksin has pushed for their inclusion.
The premier said Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom could follow completion of a second international meeting in Bangkok, in which prospects for reform in the military-run state are to be addressed, Jakrapob added.
Thailand has said Myanmar will attend the second meeting of the "Bangkok Process" that will be organised in the next few months, allowing Yangon to explain its domestic situation to the outside world.
Myanmar's Foreign Minister Win Aung said earlier this month that Aung San Suu Kyi could be freed before a landmark national convention planned for this year, and that her crippled National League for Democracy party will be allowed to operate normally by then.
The convention is the first step in a seven-point "road map" to democracy unveiled by the military regime last August which it said would begin in 2004.
Aung San Suu Kyi was taken into detention last May after unrest that also triggered a crackdown on her National League for Democracy (NLD), leaving it virtually closed down with all its branch offices forced to shut.
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