BURMESE PEOPLE RESPOND TO PHOTOS OF

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Subject: BURMESE PEOPLE RESPOND TO PHOTOS OF DAW AUNG SAN SUU KYI


  BC-WORLD-BRIEFS-NYT
  WORLD NEWS IN BRIEF
  (JT)
  c.1994 N.Y. Times News Service
  
     YANGON, Myanmar (NYT)  For nearly six years, Daw Aung San Suu
  Kyi has been a ghost to the people of her homeland, her image
  considered so dangerous to the generals who run Myanmar, the nation
* formerly known as Burma, that they refused to allow her face ever
  to be seen on a television screen or in a newspaper.
     So when millions of Burmese picked up Wednesday's copy of the
  government-con trolled newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, the
  common reaction was a startled shake of the head, and a carefully
  hidden grin.
     ''Oh, she looks so thin  too thin,'' said a 23-year-old
  student, clutching the newspaper that carried the first authorized
  photographs since 1988 of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese
  dissident leader and Nobel laureate who is now in her sixth year
  under house arrest. ''But at least she is smiling.''
     And she was smiling, serenely, in one of the two large
  photographs that showed her meeting for the first time ever with
  her jailers: the two army generals who run the military government
  of Myanmar.
     ''It is learned that it was a cordial meeting,'' the newspaper
  said in its two-sentence account of Tuesday's encounter, an event
  that many Burmese clearly hope will be a turning point for this
  nation of 42 million people in its long, tortuous road to
  democracy.