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Wired News: DASSK - Dissidents



   By AYE AYE WIN
 Associated Press Writer
   RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Burma's leading dissident, freed from nearly six years of house
arrest, said today she will resume her political activities and work toward democracy.
   Aung San Suu Kyi has already met with other leaders of her National League for
Democracy, and has appealed to the military rulers to join her in talks on national
reconciliation.
   "The authorities do know that I will be active politically because I consider myself a
politician," Mrs. Suu Kyi said today.
   Mrs. Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, was freed Monday after nearly six
years under house arrest.
   A Burmese official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said today that Oxford professor
Michael Aris, Mrs. Suu Kyi's British husband, had received a visa to visit her. Earlier this year,
he was denied a visa to visit Burma.
   Mrs. Suu Kyi met with reporters today in a small room of the two-story brick house where she
was detained. There was no furniture apart from the couch where she sat and some yellowed
photographs of her late parents on the wall.
   She said she would continue to push for the release of other dissidents who are still in jail.
She guessed that about 40 fairly well known dissidents are still behind bars.
   "I have asked for the list," she said.
   Mrs. Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, the late Burmese independence leader. She led
huge pro-democracy rallies in 1988 that were brutally crushed by the military. The next year,
Mrs. Suu Kyi was arrested.
   Her party easily won a general election in 1990, but the military refused to let it take power.
The military says it will not cede power to civilians until a new constitution is drafted, but has
given no timetable.
   Apparently fearing her popularity, the government earlier had refused to free Mrs. Suu Kyi
unless she promised to leave the country. Analysts said the authorities now felt confident that
they had the opposition under control.