Myanmar has issued
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi with a passport, her party said
today, as the former political prisoner prepares to travel abroad for
the first time in 24 years.The 66-year-old democracy icon, who spent much of the last two decades locked up in her Yangon home by Myanmar's former junta, plans to visit
Oslo next month to finally accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in person.
"We were informed on Friday that Daw Suu got her passport.Her passport is in her hand now," Nyan Win, spokesman for the veteran activist's National League for Democracy (NLD) party,
told the news agency. Daw is a term of respect in Myanmar.
Suu Kyi began applying for her Myanmar travel
documents soon after she was elected to parliament in landmark April 1
by-elections seen as a key test of reforms under the new quasi-civilian
government that came to power last year.
As well as Norway, she also intends to travel to
Britain, where she lived for years with her late husband and their two
sons before she returned to Myanmar in the late 1980s. Nyan Win said the trip would go ahead in mid-June as previously expected.Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero General Aung San, was thrust into the limelight as protests broke out
against the junta while she was visiting her homeland to care for her
sick mother in 1988. She has not set foot outside Myanmar since, fearing
that the generals who ruled the nation for decades would prevent her
from returning. >Her decision to venture overseas has been seen as a
sign of her confidence in a new regime led by President Thein Sein, a
former general, who began a sweeping programme of reforms after coming
to power last year. "She can travel abroad freely," a government official told the news agency on condition of anonymity.Suu Kyi's fight for democracy in Myanmar has come at a great personal cost.Her British academic husband Michael Aris died in 1999
and she had only limited contact with her sons during her many years of
detention. Nyan Win in April said Suu Kyi planned to travel to
her university town of Oxford and meet her children during her visit to
Britain.
Rouhani wins Iran's Presidential election Moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani won Iran's presidential election on Saturday, the interior ministry said, scoring a surprising landslide victory over conservative hardliners without the need of a second round run-off.Interior minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar announced on state television that Rouhani secured just over 50 percent of the ballot based on a 72 percent turnout of 50 million eligible voters. Mr Hassan Rouhani ... got the absolute majority of votes and was elected as president," Najjar said. Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a hard-line conservative, lagged behind with about 16 percent of the votes. Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, he too a hard-line conservative, earned 11 percent. The voter turnout was 72.7 percent. President-elect Hassan Rohani, sixty four years old, is known as a moderate conservative. He has been stressing the need to improve ties with Western nations, and is back...
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