YANGON: Myanmar's detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with the junta's liaison officer at a state guesthouse for 45 minutes Wednesday, an official told AFP.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, gave no further details of the discussions held between Suu Kyi and the government's official liaison, labour minister Aung Kyi.

It is the third meeting between the pair since the beginning of October. It comes after the country's Supreme Court agreed last week to hear a final appeal against her ongoing detention.

Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, 64, was ordered to spend another 18 months in detention in August after being convicted over an incident in which a US man swam to her house. A lower court rejected an initial appeal in October.

Myanmar's military rulers have kept Suu Kyi in detention for 14 of the last 20 years, ever since they refused to recognise her political party's landslide victory in the country's last democratic elections in 1990.

Wednesday's meeting is the latest sign of rapprochement between Suu Kyi and the junta since she wrote to Than Shwe in September offering her cooperation in getting Western sanctions lifted, after years of favouring harsh measures.

She met with Aung Kyi twice in five days in early October, the first such talks since January 2008, and met western diplomats in Yangon.

In November the regime allowed her to make a rare appearance in front of the media after holding talks with US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the highest level official from Washington to visit Myanmar for 14 years.

The extension of Suu Kyi's house arrest after a trial at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison sparked international outrage as it effectively keeps her off the stage for elections promised by the regime some time in 2010.

But in recent months the United States, and more recently the European Union, have shifted towards a policy of greater engagement with the Myanmar regime because economic sanctions have failed to bear fruit.