Suu Kyi party set for Myanmar political comeback

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Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party announced its return to the official political arena on Friday after years of marginalisation by ruling generals.

About 100 senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) were set to gather in Yangon to discuss re-registering as a political party, the latest in a string of developments in Myanmar since the first election in 20 years was held last November.

Analysts say the NLD's comeback 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.

"With or without Suu Kyi, as we see, Burma (Myanmar) is moving along. This is her chance to be part of that change," said Pavin Chachavalpongpun, research fellow at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

The NLD swept to election victory in 1990 but the junta stopped the party taking office, and it boycotted last year's vote 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 15 of the last 22 years in detention, was released a few days after the widely discredited 2010 poll and now appears to be planning an entrance to the mainstream political process.

"On the whole I think the great majority of our people will go in for re-registration," 66-year-old Suu Kyi told the BBC on Thursday.

Help from Obama

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has said he would send Hillary Clinton on the first trip to Myanmar by a US secretary of state for 50 years to see if Washington can 'empower' a nascent reform process.

Obama said in Indonesia that he made the decision after speaking directly for the first time with democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and noted 'flickers of progress' from the Myanmar government but said that more needed to be done.

His announcement, ahead of an East Asia summit in Bali, was the most significant move in US policy on Myanmar in many years, after several decades of using sanctions to isolate the country due to its rule of fear.