Red Cross can meet detainees: Myanmar

The announcement comes amid mounting international pressure on the ruling military to release Suu Kyi and her followers, held since a bloody May 30 clash between pro-junta groups and her supporters. "The ICRC has been granted access to those who were picked up for questioning about the events on May 30," an official from the junta spokesman's office told Reuters.

He said the detainees included Tin Oo, vice chairman of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), thought to be held in a jail hundreds of miles northwest of Yangon.

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The NLD swept to a landslide election victory in 1990 but was never allowed to rule.

Rumors had circulated after May 30 that Tin Oo had been killed, but family members have said they recently received a handwritten letter from him through authorities asking for medication he regularly takes.

The junta official declined to say if the ICRC would have access to Suu Kyi, who turns 58 on Thursday and was visited by a top U.N. envoy last week. But an ICRC official said they were pushing for access to all those held.

"We've been given access, but we don't know if that includes Suu Kyi. We are invited to a meeting with officials tomorrow and hope to find out more," ICRC representative Michel Ducreaux told Reuters in Yangon.

Suu Kyi is believed to be held in a government guesthouse in the capital Yangon. NLD sources and family members of those detained said they had been told many of those rounded up were in a jail in Kalay, about 600 miles northwest of Yangon.

Suu Kyi and some two dozen senior members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) were detained on May 30 following violence in a town north of Yangon near Mandalay.