Military-ruled Myanmar promised on Monday it would embark on its "road map to democracy" by convening a constitutional convention next year, Thailand's Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said.
All political parties, including democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), would be invited to the convention, Surakiart quoted Myanmar Foreign Minister Win Aung as telling a 12-nation gathering.
"I was glad to hear Win Aung telling the meeting that the year 2004 will be a very busy year," Surakiart told a news conference after a three-hour meeting. "There will be a national convention to start drafting the constitution."
There was no time frame for how long the process might take and NLD sources in Yangon said the party had not been contacted by the isolated military government on holding a convention.
"The national convention will consist of around 800 people and it is impossible to predict what 800 people will agree and when," Surakiart said.
The military government opened a convention in early 1993 aimed at drawing up a constitution that would enshrine a leading role for the military in politics. Suu Kyi's party walked out of it in 1995. It has not met since 1996.
But Surakiart suggested Myanmar's leadership aimed to finish the constitution and hold a referendum on the draft next year, saying the first three steps of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt's seven-step plan for democracy would happen next year.
A referendum is step three of the "road map to democracy" that Khin Nyunt, who is also chief of military intelligence, outlined soon after taking office in August.
The US reacted skeptically.
"We have seen promises ... from Burmese authorities," US Department of State spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. "What we want to see is the kind of action that would demonstrate that they're really going to allow the political forces in Burma and the ethnic minorities to participate in Burma's future."
Suu Kyi's NLD won a landslide general election victory in 1990 but the military, which has ruled the nation formerly known as Burma since 1962, ignored the result.
Thailand, hoping to ease Myanmar's isolation, brought together a dozen countries to hear Win Aung explain the plan and there were few expectations of progress with Suu Kyi still languishing under house arrest. Suu Kyi and scores of her supporters were locked up at the end of May following a bloody attack on her convoy by pro-government youths.
But Australian representative Christine Gallus said there was "a very frank exchange of views," diplomatic jargon for blunt talk, and Win Aung had been pressed to free Suu Kyi.
Surakiart told the news conference Win Aung had said Suu Kyi's life would be "normalized in the near future."
Thailand, pursuing a policy of "constructive engagement" with a neighbor shunned by much of the Western world, had wanted foreign ministers to attend, but none came.
Most sent junior ministers or senior foreign ministry officials. Only Indonesia, which dispatched influential former foreign minister Ali Alatas, and the UN, which sent special envoy to Myanmar Razali Ismael, sent senior figures.
Other participants included Austria, China, Singapore, Japan, Italy, current chairman of the EU, India, France and Germany.
The US, which imposed more sanctions on Myanmar after Suu Kyi was arrested again in May, was not invited.
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