May 4, AFP - Top members of Burma's opposition National League for Democracy met Tuesday with their detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the third time in a week ahead of this month's constitutional convention, the NLD said.
NLD chairman Aung Shwe, vice chairman Tin Oo, and party secretary U Lwin met with the democracy icon at her Yangon home to discuss internal issues, U Lwin said.
"We discussed party internal affairs," he told reporters after the hour-long meeting, without elaborating.
Tin Oo was brought from house arrest to attend the talks, which NLD sources earlier had said would include all nine members of the decision-making Central Executive Committee (CEC).
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, also remains under house arrest, but analysts and senior NLD officials say they are hopeful she could be freed before the convention opens on May 17.
The NLD said last week it was almost certain to attend the convention as it expected the junta to accept its proposed changes to the procedures under which the convention will be run.
But when asked if the junta had responded to the proposals, U Lwin said: "We are still waiting."
The forum is the first step in the junta's self-described "road map to democracy", which begins with the drafting of a new constitution and is billed as ending with free elections.
The party leaders were all
taken into detention last May when Aung San Suu Kyi's convoy was attacked by
a pro-junta gang during a political tour of northern Burma, prompting a major
crackdown on the pro-democracy
opposition.
The talks at her home were the third in a week for the party's leadership, whose nine CEC members met for the first time since May 2003 last Tuesday and then again on Thursday.
U Lwin said last week the party had many things to discuss, including six "objectives" laid down by the regime as the basis for the new constitution, one of which mandates a leading role for the military in any future political scenario.
Analysts have said the convention
would have no credibility without the input of the currently detained pro-democracy
icon and her party. The convention is expected to assemble government, political
parties
and ethnic representatives in a forum that would essentially mirror a previous
convention which collapsed in 1995 when the NLD walked out.