October 20, 2009
SINGAPORE (AFP) - Myanmar has scuttled a plan by fellow ASEAN members to issue a public appeal seeking amnesty for detained pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, a diplomatic source said Tuesday.
"They rejected it two months ago. They rejected the idea," the Southeast Asian diplomat told AFP just days before the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders hold their annual summit in Thailand this weekend.
The source, who asked not to be named, said that while Suu Kyi's plight could not be put on the formal ASEAN agenda, Myanmar could still be discussed during a closed-door "retreat" in which some of the leaders could call for her release.
They could also ask that her party be allowed to contest elections planned for next year, the diplomat added.
The diplomat said he understood that a number of other countries backed Myanmar's position that a public appeal for amnesty for Suu Kyi would amount to interference in its domestic affairs.
Myanmar had vetoed previous efforts to use ASEAN meetings to openly discuss Suu Kyi's fate.
ASEAN senior officials who met in Jakarta in August had agreed to work on an amnesty call for the Nobel Peace laureate convicted in August for allowing an American man stay in her lakeside home after he swam uninvited to the compound.
The 64-year-old Suu Kyi, who has spent around 14 of the past 20 years in detention, got an extra 18 months' house arrest, which provoked international outrage.
Last month, Myanmar judges rejected Suu Kyi's appeal against the sentence.
Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy to a landslide victory in elections in 1990, but the junta has refused to recognise the result.
Myanmar's military rulers are planning elections next year as part of promised democratic reforms, but critics have demanded that Suu Kyi and her party should be allowed to participate.
As well as Myanmar, ASEAN also groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
