Suu Kyi: plans to run in Myanmar elections

Myanmar's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said Wednesday she would run in upcoming parliamentary elections as she voiced cautious optimism over the military-dominated government's tentative reforms. "I hope to run for parliament," Suu Kyi said in a videoconference from Myanmar on the eve of her meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is on a historic visit aimed at encouraging the reforms. "I will certainly run for elections when they take place," she told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington. She said her National League for Democracy (NLD) will start making plans to contest the by-elections in Myanmar, also known as Burma, once its application for registration has been accepted. The NLD announced this month it would re-register as a political party and contest by-elections after boycotting last year's parliamentary poll. There are 48 parliamentary seats available but no polling dates have been set for by-elections. "We hope that by having some of our people in parliament we will be able to do twice the work that we have been doing because" the party will have activities both inside and outside the legislature, she said. She said the party will push for ceasefires in the country's ethnic conflicts as well as press for the rule of law to be established and for the remaining political prisoners to be released after scores were freed recently. In Washington, State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner welcomed her plans to run. "It speaks to the fact that there is an opening in the political environment there that we would view as constructive," he said. The NLD's decision to end its boycott of the political process came on the same day the government received a dramatic seal of approval from the United States for a string of nascent reforms. After speaking directly to Nobel laureate Suu Kyi for the first time, in a call from Air Force One, US President Barack Obama said Clinton would become the first secretary of state to visit Myanmar for 50 years. Toner underscored Suu Kyi's importance for Washington, saying "she is, given her stature, given her long struggle for freedom in Burma, she is clearly a powerful, principal interlocutor." The NLD won a landslide victory in polls in 1990 but the then-ruling junta never allowed the party to take power. Suu Kyi, although a figurehead for the campaign, was under house arrest at the time. Myanmar's next election was not held until November last year, and the NLD boycotted it -- mainly because of rules that would have forced it to expel imprisoned members. Suu Kyi was again under house arrest. Although the election was widely criticized as a sham, Myanmar's military rulers gave way to a nominally civilian administration which released Suu Kyi from years in detention and has since made a surprising series of conciliatory gestures. Suu Kyi voiced hoped that Clinton, who arrived in the capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday, and the government "will be able to come to some kind of understanding that will encourage the reforms to go further." On Thursday, Clinton meets President Thein Sein, a former general now at the vanguard of reforms, before traveling to the main city Yangon for talks with Suu Kyi, whose views hold great sway in Washington. Clinton is expected to urge Myanmar to free all political prisoners -- estimated by activists to number between 500 and more than 1,600 -- and call for an end to the ethnic conflicts. "I've always believed in cautious optimism," Suu Kyi said when asked for her assessment of the political changes underway in her homeland. She was given a standing ovation at the end of a videoconference that lasted an hour.