BURMA MAY FREE OPPOSITION LEADER

Nobel Prize Winner Held At Home For Most Of Past Decade

Burma's military dictatorship signaled Monday that it might soon
release Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country's democratic
opposition and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who has been under
house arrest since September.

The junta that rules Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been bombarded
in recent weeks by criticism from the United Nations, human rights
groups and Thailand. It has been accused of torturing political
opponents, using forced labor and condoning an illegal drug industry
that is spreading addiction across Southeast Asia.

Report alleges torture

Amnesty International will release a report today that charges Burma's
government with using torture as an ``institution'' of state
repression. The report says torture is used routinely ``as a means of
instilling fear in anyone critical of the military
government.''

In what may be an attempt to defang these critics, Burmese officials
attending a meeting in Vientiane, Laos, told European Union officials
that they would allow a four-member European delegation to visit Burma
next month.

Its members would be free to talk to opposition leaders, including Suu
Kyi, who is likely to be released from house arrest before the visit,
said Charles Josselin, a French official who attended the meeting.

Early this month, the government released six other prominent
opposition leaders. They were detained, along with Suu Kyi, when she
tried to travel outside Rangoon, the capital, on Sept. 21 to meet with
other members of her party.

The government has all but banned the party, the National League for
Democracy, in recent months, locking up nearly all of its leaders in
the capital and around the country.

President Clinton last week awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom,
the highest American civilian honor, to Suu Kyi.

Since her party won the national election held in 1990, which the
generals in power ignored, she has spent most of the past decade
confined to her house in Rangoon, also known as Yangon.

The United States has not received any direct information from the
European Union on the meeting in Vientiane, said a State Department
official. He said the United States would welcome the release of Suu
Kyi, but cautioned that ``the proof of the pudding is in the eating.''

At the meeting in Laos, Foreign Minister Win Aung of Burma reportedly
did not mention Suu Kyi by name. But he led European Union officials
attending a meeting with foreign ministers from the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations to believe that she and two other opposition
leaders would be released soon, Josselin told reporters.

``It's hard to imagine that a lifting of the restrictions would not
happen before the visit,'' Josselin said.

Burma condemned by U.N.

The government of Burma has been singled out in the past month for an
exceptionally scathing round of condemnation from the United Nations
General Assembly, international trade unions, human rights groups and
military leaders in Thailand.

The General Assembly last week accused the government of condoning the
use of rape, torture, mass arrests, forced labor and summary
executions to suppress dissent.

The chief of Thailand's armed forces said he planned to use a visit to
Burma this week to warn the government that the widespread production
of heroin and amphetamines there was a threat to regional stability,
as well as a cause of drug addiction in Southeast Asia.