Myanmar's Suu Kyi treated, returned home - party

BANGKOK, June 10 (Reuters) Myanmar's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was taken to hospital with severe diarrhoea yesterday and returned home after her condition improved, a spokesman for her party said today.

''She was taken to hospital and then taken home. She is improving,'' Nyan Win, spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), told Reuters by telephone from Yangon.

There was no comment from the military junta about the condition of Suu Kyi, who turns 61 on June 19 and has had limited access to her doctor in recent months.

A U S State Department official yesterday voiced concern about Suu Kyi's health and urged Yangon to end her latest detention, which began in 2003 and was extended for one year on May 27 despite international pressure for her release.

''We would call upon the Burmese (Myanmar) government to provide Aung San Suu Kyi any and all medical assistance that she might need and to do so expeditiously and to ensure her safety during any treatment,'' said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, has been in prison or under house arrest for 10 of the past 17 years. Her party won landslide elections in 1990 but the military refused to relinquish power.

''We are very much concerned that a person of her age had this kind of serious diarrhoea. We are very concerned about her well-being,'' said Soe Aung, spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), a coalition of exiled groups from the former Burma.

REUTERS SI HT1912