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Myanmar Protester May End Standoff



Myanmar Protester May End Standoff

 .c The Associated Press 

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Her health worsening, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi
offered Thursday to end her roadside standoff with the military regime if
jailed members of her political party are freed. 

Suu Kyi's health was ``failing'' nine days into the standoff, but she was in
``high spirits,'' according to a statement released by her National League for
Democracy. 

Her offer came on the eve of a deadline Suu Kyi has set for the government to
finally convene a parliament elected in 1990. Suu Kyi's party won 82 percent
of the seats in the assembly, but the military refused to honor the results. 

The statement quoted Suu Kyi's personal physicians, who have visited her twice
in her van about 20 miles outside Yangon, as saying her eyes were turning
yellow and she was suffering low blood pressure. 

Doctors took blood samples, fearing she may have contracted jaundice or
another disease after spending nine days in the van with three colleagues on a
small country bridge. 

Suu Kyi, 53, is in her fourth confrontation in two months with the military
government over her right to travel freely within Myanmar, also known as
Burma. She was stopped Aug. 12 as she attempted to drive to the city of
Bassein to meet fellow party members. 

Suu Kyi's party said the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner was willing to return
to Yangon if the government released members of her party imprisoned since
May. 

There are 42 of her party members in Myanmar's prisons, according to the All
Burma Students Democratic Front, an exile group. The number of party members
arrested since May is unclear. 

There was no immediate response from the government to Suu Kyi's offer. In the
past, they have never met her calls to release political prisoners or begin a
dialogue. 

The military said Thursday it has no intention of meeting Suu Kyi's demand to
convene parliament by Friday. 

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962. In 1988, the military gunned down
thousands of protesters during a nationwide uprising.