Suu Kyi to leave Burma for first time in decades

After nearly two decades under house arrest in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi will travel toNorway and Britain in June, her party said on Wednesday.

After nearly two decades under house arrest in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi will travel toNorway and Britain in June, her party said on Wednesday. It will be the first time she has set foot outside Burma in 24 years and the first time a member of her National League for Democracy has made a diplomatic visit abroad.

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Nyan Win, her party spokesman, said she plans to visit Norway first, where she will have meetings in Oslo.

She will move on to the UK and will visit Oxford, where she attended university in the 1970s. But it is unclear which British dignitaries she will be meeting. “I don't know the exact dates but she said she will go in June,” Nyan Win said. “She will go to Norway, have some meetings in Oslo, and then go to the UK.”

The travel plan follows months of unprecedented change in Burma, which began when a nominally civilian government took power in 2010 and Thein Sein, the president, ushered in a series of reforms.

Among these was greater freedom of the press, ceasefires with ethnic rebels and the release of political prisoners. The most important change, however, has been the 1 April byelection.