Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has written a letter to the head of Burma’s ruling junta with suggestions about how to get Western sanctions lifted, according to her lawyer.

“Aung San Suu Kyi’s letter is her thinking on how to work together to lift the sanctions,” Nyan Win, Suu Kyi’s lawyer, told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

According to diplomatic sources, Suu Kyi also asked for permission to meet with her family and senior members of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and requested a meeting with the junta’s top general, Snr-Gen Than Shwe.

Suu Kyi said that she wants to know how many sanctions have been imposed on Burma and how many people are negatively impacted by them. She also said she wants to hear the opinions of other countries through their ambassadors based in Burma, according to Nyan Win.

“To implement the proposal for lifting sanctions, we need to know all things,” Suu Kyi told Nyan Win. The letter will be sent to Snr-Gen Than Shwe in a few days, he added.

News of Suu Kyi’s letter comes two days after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced plans for a major policy shift that will include engaging with Burma’s military junta as part of an effort to promote political reform in the country.

Suu Kyi last asked the Burmese junta to cooperate with her to lift sanctions in 2007.

She said that sanctions could be lifted for the benefit of the country and its citizens, but added that she could not end the sanctions herself because they were imposed by the West, not her.
Suu Kyi said she agreed with the Obama administration’s plans to engage in direct high-level talks with the junta, according to Nyan Win.

Clinton announced the new US approach on Wednesday at the United Nations after meeting with counterparts from a number of countries that are trying to convince Burma’s authoritarian regime to reform, allow dissent and release thousands of political prisoners, including Suu Kyi.

Clinton said US sanctions against members of Burma’s leadership would remain in place but that those measures would now be accompanied by outreach. Clinton had earlier stated that the sanctions alone were having little impact.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Burma due to its continued detention of Suu Kyi and its refusal to recognize the NLD’s victory in the country’s last election in 1990.

The junta sentenced the 64-year-old Suu Kyi to an extra 18 months in detention at her lakeside home in August after an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her house.

Nyan Win, a spokesperson for the NLD, told The Irrawaddy today that Suu Kyi met with Aung Kyi, a retired major general who is also the regime’s labor minister, for nearly an hour at a government guesthouse near her lakeside home.

It was the first time the two have met since January 2008.“The meeting started at 1 pm and lasted about 45 minutes,” said Nyan Win, who is also Suu Kyi’s lawyer.

He added that it was unclear if the meeting was related to a letter she sent to regime leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe last week. “We still don’t know if they [Suu Kyi and Aung Kyi] discussed the letter because we haven’t heard any of the details of today’s meeting yet,” he said.

On Sept. 25, Suu Kyi sent a letter to the country’s top general to say she wanted to cooperate with the junta to lift sanctions on Burma. She also asked to meet with envoys from the United States, European Union and Australia to learn more about the sanctions.

NLD sources said that there has been no response to Suu Kyi’s letter so far.

According to Nyan Win, Suu Kyi’s family doctor, Tin Myo Win, was allowed to visit her on Friday from 2 pm to 4 pm. It was his first visit since Sept. 20, when he diagnosed Suu Kyi with low blood pressure.

“As far as I know, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is now well and in good sprits,” said Nyan Win.

Aung Kyi was appointed “Minister for Relations” to coordinate contacts with the detained democracy leader in October 2007, after the junta came under intense international condemnation for its brutal crackdown on Buddhist monk-led mass demonstrations the previous month.

At a press conference held in December 2007, Aung Gyi said his talks with Suu Kyi were proceeding well.

“I have met with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi three times. We have made progress at the meetings. The first meeting was aimed at gaining understanding between us. The second meeting was to discuss frameworks for the future. The third meeting was to discuss the facts that should be included in the framework,” Aung Kyi said at the time.

Three more meetings were held after this, but the talks abruptly ended in January 2008, when Suu Kyi said that they were mostly spent discussing trivial subjects. She said that some of their hour-long meetings were almost entirely devoted to making semantic distinctions between words like “cooperation” and “collaboration.”

Meanwhile, Rangoon remains under tight security today, as the authorities moved to prevent protests by monks demanding an apology from the junta for an incident that sparked outrage two years ago.

The All Burma Monks’ Alliance set Oct. 3 as the deadline for the regime to apologize for violently suppressing a peaceful demonstration by monks in the city of Pakkoku in September 2007. It also demanded the release of all monks imprisoned since the crackdown on the massive uprising that grew out of the Pakokku protests, known as the Saffron Revolution.

“Riot police are position around Shwedagon Pagoda, all major monasteries and the downtown area,” said a Rangoon resident.