Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San
Suu Kyi has told the BBC she is ready for talks with all groups to achieve
national reconciliation.
A day after her release from house
arrest, she said it was time to “sort out our differences across the
table”.
Ms Suu Kyi also said she intended to
listen to what the Burmese people and her international supporters wanted as
she planned her next steps.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has spent
15 of the past 21 years in detention.
World leaders and human rights groups have
welcomed her release.
US President Barack Obama said it was
“long overdue”, while UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Ms Suu
Kyi was an “inspiration”, and urged Burma to free all its remaining
2,200 political prisoners.
The move came six days after Burma held
its first elections in 20 years, which was won by the biggest military-backed
party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), but widely condemned
as a sham.
Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for
Democracy (NLD) won the last election in 1990, but was never allowed to take
power. It was disbanded by the military authorities after it decided to boycott
last week’s polls.
In her first interview since being
released, Ms Suu Kyi told the BBC’s Alastair Leithead in Bangkok by telephone
that one of the first things she had to do was “to listen to what the
people have to say”.
“The only thing is that if you talk
to a large crowd, it’s difficult to listen to them. You have to do all the
talking. But that’s not what I want to do.
“I want to listen to what the
people want. I want to listen to what the other countries want, what they think
they can do for us, what we think then that they could do for us, and to work
out something that is acceptable to as many people as possible,” she
added.
Asked how she would describe her future
role, she said: “I just think of myself as one of the workers for
democracy. Well, better known, perhaps, than the others here in Burma but one
of those working for democracy.”
Ms Suu Kyi said she was prepared to hold
talks with all factions in Burma to help launch a process of national
reconciliation.
“I think we will have to sort out
our differences across the table, talking to each other, agreeing to disagree,
or finding out why we disagree and trying to remove the sources of our
disagreement,” she said.
“There are so many things that we
have to talk about.”
The NLD was currently investigating
allegations of fraud in last week’s elections, she said, and would soon publish
a report.
Earlier on Sunday, Aung Sang Suu Kyi had
to struggle through the throngs of jubilant supporters to reach the podium
where she was supposed to speak. Thousands had gathered to hear her.
They were probably expecting Ms Suu Kyi
to make clear what she planned to do now that she was free – in the event she asked
for help. She said she could not do it alone, and was “ready to work with
all democratic forces” – an appeal perhaps to an opposition bitterly
divided over the recent election here to unite once more.
She told the crowd she believed in the
rule of human rights and the rule of law and felt no antagonism to those who
had kept her detained for much of the past two decades. The basis of democratic
freedom, she said, was freedom of speech. But she cautioned that if her
supporters wanted to get to where they wanted, they had to do it the right way.
“Do not give up hope,” she added.
Ms Suu Kyi’s words were measured and
careful, she will know that the military leaders who rule this country will be
scrutinising her every move and today she was careful not to provoke them.
“From what I’ve heard there are
many, many questions about the fairness about the election and there are many
allegations of vote-rigging and so on.”
Ms Suu Kyi said she was not fearful of
risking re-arrest by continuing to push for democracy, even though she accepted
that it was a possibility.
“I’m not fearful, not in the sense
that I think to myself that I won’t do this or I won’t do that because they’ll
put me under arrest again. That I don’t have in mind,” she explained.
“But, I know that there’s always
the possibility that I might be re-arrested. It’s not something that I
particularly wish for, because if you’re placed under arrest you can’t work as
much as you can when you’re not under arrest.”
But she stressed that her situation
under house arrest had been much better than that of other political prisoners
who are in jail.
Ms Suu Kyi added that, during her time
in detention she had never felt alone, partly thanks to the BBC, which kept her
in touch with the rest of the world.
Earlier on Sunday, Ms Suu Kyi was mobbed
by her supporters as she made her way for the first time since her release from
her house to the NLD’s offices.
The 65-year-old said freedom of speech
was the basis of democracy, but warned a crowd of about 4,000 people in Rangoon
that if they wanted change they would have to go about getting it in the right
way.
“We must work together,” she
told them. “We Burmese tend to believe in fate, but if we want change we
have to do it ourselves.”
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