Suu Kyi says she'll run in Burma by-elections

YANGON, Burma - Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to contest upcoming by-elections and is confident democracy will come to the country but said Wednesday further reforms are needed before the U.S. lifts sanctions.

Suu Kyi said she supported increased American engagement to encourage Burma, also known as Myanmar, to advance reforms that have seen it shift from five decades of direct military rule. She was speaking as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived on a groundbreaking visit.

The U.S. and other Western nations have applied tough economic and political sanctions over the past two decades to punish the previous military regime for its human rights abuses and suppression of democracy. The sanctions have remained in place, even as Washington has reversed its previous policy of isolating Burma.

"I haven't changed my mind on sanctions," Suu Kyi told Associated Press Television News in Yangon. She said she will have a better idea of the chance for changes after she meets Clinton on Friday.

Later Wednesday, in comments made by webcast to the Council of Foreign Relations think tank in Washington, Suu Kyi said Burma should release political prisoners, negotiate with democratic opposition groups and grant access for humanitarian aid in ethnic conflict areas.

"Then the time will certainly have come for sanctions to relax," she said.

Suu Kyi stated she would run in upcoming by-elections that follow a nationwide poll in 2010. Her National League for Democracy boycotted that vote but is now reregistering after regulations that would have prevented her running for parliament were changed.

Clinton probes will for reform in Burma

"I will certainly run for the elections when they take place," Suu Kyi said. No date for that vote has been set. Her party won 1990 national elections but the result was not honored by the military.

"The NLD has been prevented from getting as close to the people as we wished in the last 22 years. Now it's an opportunity to make up for lost time," she said.

She said she personally trusted the President Thein Sein -- a former junta member -- but there were probably people within his government who disagreed about "how desirable reforms are."

"What we have to do is make sure no one can put a stop to the reform process. We all have to cooperate to make sure it goes forward," she said.

Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past two decades under house arrest at her lakeside residence in Yangon until her release a year ago, said she was not bitter or angry about the past.

She said she supported a fact-finding commission to probe past human rights abuses in Burma but not a tribunal to seek prosecutions -- likely a concern of former junta members and military officers. They could be implicated in war crimes allegedly committed in brutal campaigns waged for years against ethnic insurgencies.

Suu Kyi said accountability was needed to prevent a repeat of past mistakes. That would serve "to heal wounds of our society rather than open them up further," she said.

Asked at the end of the 75-minute webcast whether democracy would come to Burma, Suu Kyi responded: "Of course."