Senator meets jailed Nobelist Suu Kyi, wins American's release

YANGON, Myanmar — Stung by international outrage over the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's ruling generals agreed Saturday to hand an American prisoner involved in her case to a visiting U.S. senator.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was also granted an unprecedented meeting with the junta chief, and was allowed to hold talks with Suu Kyi, the first foreign official permitted to see the Nobel laureate since she was sentenced to 18 more months of house arrest on Tuesday.

American John Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years of hard labor for swimming uninvited to Suu Kyi's lakeside house in Yangon, will be deported on Sunday, Webb said in a statement from his Washington office.

The impending deportation indicates "good relations between the two countries and hope (that) these will grow," Yettaw's lawyer Khin Maoung Oo said. Webb echoed the sentiment.

"It is my hope that we can take advantage of these gestures as a way to begin laying a foundation of goodwill and confidence-building in the future," Webb said in the statement.

Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years, and a global groundswell of international pressure to release the 64-year-old opposition leader has kept the impoverished military-ruled country under sanctions in recent years.

While Washington has traditionally been Myanmar's strongest critic, applying political and economic sanctions against the junta, President Barack Obama's new ambassador for East Asia, Kurt Campbell, recently said the administration is interested in easing its policy of isolation.

The regime has shown no sign it will release Suu Kyi before next year's general elections, which critics say will perpetuate the military's decades-old rule, but Webb's visit appeared to show the junta is sensitive to international censure.

"If the Americans can get the generals to see that their country's interest is reflected in taking interest in reconciliation, releasing Aun Sun Kyi and holding free and fair elections, that would be very helpful," said John Sawyers, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations.

"It's important to have some measure of engagement as well as real pressure on the regime," he told BBC Radio 4.

Michael Hammer, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said officials in Washington had seen reports about Webb's trip and were "keeping up with the developments, including the impending release of American citizen John Yettaw."