Suu Kyi meets junta minister

YANGON: Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Wednesday for a second time in five days with a minister from the ruling junta, a Myanmar official said.

The opposition leader met labour minister Aung Kyi, who is the official liaison between Suu Kyi and the government, for 30-minute talks at a state guest house in Yangon, the official told AFP.

On Saturday the pair met for the first time since January 2008, for talks likely to have centred on how to get sanctions against military-ruled Myanmar lifted, according to her lawyer Nyan Win.

That meeting came a day after Suu Kyi's appeal against her extended house arrest was rejected.

Judges upheld her conviction over an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her house in May, earning her an extra 18 months detention and provoking international outrage.

Washington in particular, which recently unveiled a major policy shift to re-engage the junta, has repeatedly pressed for the release of Suu Kyi, who has spent much of the past 20 years in detention.

The US held its highest-level talks with Myanmar in nearly 10 years last week, but warned against lifting sanctions until there is progress towards democracy.

Suu Kyi herself, who welcomed America's re-engagement, appears to have eased her stance after years of advocating punitive measures against the junta.

It emerged last week that she had written to military regime leader Than Shwe offering suggestions for getting Western sanctions lifted.

After the Nobel Laureate met with Aung Kyi at the weekend, her lawyer Nyan Win said he thought that their discussions would be related to her letter.