Myanmarese minister says Suu Kyi will be released in November

London/Rangoon, Jan.25 (ANI): Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be released from house arrest in November, a government minister has told a gathering of local officials, according to two people who attended the meeting.

The Telegraph quoted Home Minister Major General Maung Oo as telling the January 21 meeting that Suu Kyi would be freed in November, a month after many observers expect the country to hold its first parliamentary elections in two decades.

The information could not be independently verified but the two people who attended the meeting said that the comment was made before an audience of several hundred people in Kyaukpadaung, a town about 350 miles north of the former capital, Rangoon.

The Nobel peace prize winner has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest. In August a court sentenced her to an additional 18 months after an American, John Yettaw, swam across a lake to her villa in Rangoon and stayed overnight.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won Burma's last elections, in 1990, by a landslide but was blocked from power after the junta in place since a 1962 coup refused to recognise the result. (ANI)