Europe, US, UN step up calls for Suu Kyi's release

Myanmar's continued detention of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is "deeply regrettable", and the junta's snailpaced transition to democracy must be speeded up, a UN rights envoy barred from visiting the country said yesterday.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, in Bangkok for a United Nations-sponsored conference, also said Myanmar's military rulers needed to clarify the timeframe for its self-declared "roadmap to democracy" which includes a referendum on a new constitution and eventual free elections.

"The political transition process can not go on forever," Pinheiro told a press briefing here.

Meanwhile, the United States called Thursday for joint international action to restore democracy in military-ruled Myanmar.

In a statement ahead of the 60th birthday of Myanmar's democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, on Sunday, the State Department said the international community should "work together to end the repression of this brutal regime."

The United States and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Myanmar for several years but have failed to dislodge the military regime.

Norway's Nobel Committee, which gave Suu Kyi the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, called attention to her plight and called for her to be freed.

"We ask that she be set free immediately," the chairman of the committee, Ole Mjoes, said in a statement dated June 19 marking Suu Kyi's 60th birthday on Sunday.

"Suu Kyi's struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades," he said.

The committee "wishes to congratulate her on this day and to express our admiration for the courageous way in which she is fighting for democracy and human rights" in Myanmar, he said.