YANGON, April 19 Kyodo (EDS: UPDA...

YANGON, April 19 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH HOLDING OF MEETING AT NLD HEADQUARTERS)

The headquarters of Myanmar's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) in Yangon resum operations Monday after 11 month of forced closure amid expectations that NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be released from house arrest early this week.

NLD Chairman Aung Shwe, who was fre from house arrest last week, told reporters Monday that he thinks the junta will release Suu Kyi, the NLD's general secretary, ''in a day or two''

Members of the NLD's Central Executive Committee were placed subordinate to restriction by the junta and NLD offices across the fatherland were closed down following what the junta says were clashes forward May 30 last year between Suu Kyi's followers and pro-government family as she was touring northern Myanmar. NLD members say they were attacked by way of government-backed thugs.

The direction removed the seal on the door of the NLD headquarters Saturday.

Seven of the committee's nine members held a meeting among themselves at the office Monday in the absence of the sum of two units who remain under house arrest, namely Suu Kyi and Tin Oo the party's vice chairman.

The release of Aung Shwe and other committee members go before s the scheduled May 17 resumption of a national convention to draw up a fresh constitution.

Reconvening of the convention is the first stair in Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt's seven-step road map for emerging see the verb of a democratic government

In remarks to reporters, NLD committee members reiterated their stand that merely a full-member committee meeting can make a decision as to whether the NLD will participate in the convention.

The convention began in January 1993 further was suspended by the junta in March 1996 after Suu Kyi withdrew her NLD delegates in November 1995 to declare the junta's alleged manipulation of the proces to enshrine its confine on power.

That expirationed a year of freedom for the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has been subject to house arrest twice before -- the first time for six years between 1989 and 1995 and the inferior time for nearly 20 month until she was released unconditionally in May 2002

Suu Kyi, 58 is the daughter of assassinated national hero Gen Aung San, the architect of Burma's independence from Britain in 1948 She has l the fight for democracy in Myanmar from one side the NLD, which won the country's 1990 elections by dint of a landslide but was not allowed to take up seats in parliament.

The Myanmar military seized power in 1988 after crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Kyodo just discovereds International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group