YANGON: A meeting of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party backed an official political comeback on Friday after years of marginalisation, the latest sign of tentative progress in military-dominated Myanmar.
The party's gathering came as the US signalled a thaw in relations with the long-isolated nation, with President Barack Obama saying he would send Hillary Clinton on the first trip to Myanmar by a US secretary of state for 50 years.
At a meeting of about 100 senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Yangon, delegates for each regional grouping spoke in favour of re-registering as a political party after boycotting last year's election.
"All the states and regions agreed. We have to hear from two more groups -- the youth and women's committee members. After that we will announce officially," said Kyi Toe, of the NLD's information office.
The NLD won a landslide victory in polls in 1990 but the win was never recognised by the then-ruling junta.
The party refused to take part in last November's vote, the country's first in 20 years, mainly because of rules that would have forced it to expel imprisoned members. Suu Kyi was under house arrest at the time.
The Nobel peace prize winner, who has spent most of the last two decades in detention, was released a few days after the polls and now appears to be planning an entrance to the mainstream political process.
NLD spokesman Nyan Win recently told AFP that Suu Kyi was "likely" to participate in a coming by-election. It is not yet clear when the vote will be held, but more than 40 seats are available in parliament's two chambers.
Leading figures from the NLD travelled from across Myanmar for their meeting at the party's headquarters in Yangon.
"We will follow Aung San Suu Kyi's decision as we unconditionally believe in her. If she takes part in the coming by-election we have no objection at all," said Ba Swe, a party member from the Irrawaddy region, west of Yangon.
On Thursday the NLD youth wing, comprising members aged under 35, released a statement in favour of re-registration.
Analysts say the return of the NLD would add to the legitimacy of the army-backed government, which is seeking to end its global isolation by loosening political shackles -- but also increase the relevancy of the popular but long-excluded Suu Kyi.
Her party meeting came a day after she spoke directly for the first time to Obama, who on Friday noted "flickers of progress" in the Southeast Asian country, although he said more needs to be done.
Speaking in Indonesia ahead of an East Asia summit, the US president said Clinton would visit Myanmar next month to see if Washington can "empower" its nascent reform process.
Myanmar's 2010 election, widely discredited by outside observers, brought the army's political proxies to power after decades of outright military rule, but the new government has surprised critics with a number of reformist moves.
It has held direct talks with Suu Kyi, freed some 200 dissidents from jail, frozen work on an unpopular mega-dam and passed a law giving workers the right to strike.
As a reward for its conciliatory moves, Myanmar has won Southeast Asia's backing to chair the region's ASEAN bloc in 2014, despite the United States warning that the move was premature.
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