SINGAPORE (AFP) - Hopes for the release of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi were raised and then quickly faded at a meeting of Southeast Asian ministers, as officials said Monday that comments indicating she could be freed within months had been misinterpreted.Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) foreign ministers have told their Myanmar counterpart they were "deeply disappointed" over the junta's recent decision to extend the opposition leader's house arrest by another year.
But Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said Sunday that the regime's foreign minister Nyan Win had suggested she could be freed within six months under a technical deadline set in Myanmar law.
Asked Monday whether Aung San Suu Kyi could be released then, Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said: "That's our hope."
But Yeo said Monday that Nyan Win had been misunderstood, and that the legal limit of the detention period would only be reached "six months from May 2009" when the one-year extension expires.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of the past 18 years under house arrest at her home in the country's main city Yangon, with the most recent spell beginning in May 2003.
Trevor Wilson, a former Australian ambassador to Myanmar, said he expected the democracy leader to be kept in detention until elections billed for 2010.
"I don't think there's any evidence that the government is ready to release her," he told AFP.
David Mathieson, a consultant on Myanmar for US-based Human Rights Watch, said the military regime's claims to be abiding by national laws were farcical.
When the six-year limit expires "they'll probably just come back up with another excuse and bank on people's short memories" he said.
Mathieson urged Asean to push for Aung San Suu Kyi's immediate release, and to ensure she was freed without conditions and was permitted to travel the country and participate in the elections.
"It's a slow way of making her irrelevant, and that's the real crime," he said.
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