Myanmar Supreme Court to consider Suu Kyi appeal: Lawyer

YANGON: Myanmar's Supreme Court has agreed to consider opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's appeal against her house arrest, due to end days after controversial elections next month, her lawyer said Thursday.

The detention of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has kept her off the scene for the country's first polls in 20 years, which have been dismissed by critics as a charade aimed at putting a civilian cloak over military rule.

Suu Kyi's last-ditch "special appeal" will be heard by a panel of three judges in the capital Naypyidaw. The date of the hearing has not yet been announced.

The democracy icon's current term of detention is due to end on November 13, although some fear the ruling generals may find an excuse to extend it.

Suu Kyi's lawyers say the current period of detention started with her imprisonment on May 14 and expect her to be freed next month, but they are continuing their efforts to have the conviction quashed.

"We are always hoping for the best," said one of her attorneys, Khin Htay Kywe.

Suu Kyi lodged the last-ditch appeal in May. She has already had her appeal rejected twice, most recently by the Supreme Court in February. Court verdicts in the army-ruled country rarely favour opposition activists.

Even if Suu Kyi is released, observers believe the pro-democracy leader is unlikely to be allowed full freedom to conduct political activities.

Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the past two decades locked up, had her detention extended by 18 months in August last year over a bizarre incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her lakeside home.

Her National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990 but was never allowed to take office.

The party has been forcibly abolished for boycotting the November 7 election, leaving the opposition in disarray. Prisoners are barred from standing as parliamentary candidates.

Western governments as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have repeatedly said the vote will not be credible unless Suu Kyi and other opponents are freed.

The UN special envoy on rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, cast new doubt Wednesday on the legitimacy of the election.

"Conditions for genuine elections are limited under the current circumstances," he said.

"Numerous political parties have complained of official harassment and intimidation. The potential for these elections to bring meaningful change and improvement to the human rights situation remains uncertain," he added.

The ruling junta strongly rejected the UN report and again denied there are any "prisoners of conscience" in its prisons.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962 and critics say the generals have given their proxy parties an unfair advantage in the November polls.

One quarter of the seats in parliament are reserved for the military whatever the outcome of the vote, which foreign election observers and international media will not be allowed into the country to observe.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has pleaded for greater global scrutiny of the polls, warning that a "propaganda victory for the regime" could significantly set back democracy efforts.

"Nothing perhaps is more important right now as the day of the phony electoral event approaches than global public discussion of the real nature of the forthcoming electoral fraud," the Harvard University professor said.

"The expressions of pious hope that things can change after the election are totally contrary to reasoned analysis about what's going on in Burma," Sen said in a lecture at Johns Hopkins University in Washington on Wednesday.