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- Invite's 'age limit' puts off China visit by Aung San Suu Kyi
- Saturday, 04 May, 2013, 5:42am
- Patrick Boehler
- http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1229566/invites-age-limit-puts-china-visit-aung-san-suu-kyi
- Members of Myanmar's leading opposition party, the National League for Democracy, will make their first official visit to China next week - but leader Aung San Suu Kyi will not attend because the party said Beijing excluded delegates older than 60.
- The age limit, which was not explained, would delay a much anticipated China trip by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who was freed from years of house arrest by Myanmar's Beijing-backed military junta in 2010.
- "If the Chinese Communist Party invites her, I think she is ready to go there," said Han Thar Myint, an NLD Central Executive Committee member. "In the [May] invitation, it was mentioned that the delegates should be under 60 years of age. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is now 67, so she can't go there."
- But Gao Mingbo, political section chief of Beijing's embassy in Yangon, said he was "not aware" of the under-60 rule.
- "I take this visit as a warming-up exercise," Gao said. "As the Chinese saying goes, a channel is made when the water flows."
- The 12-member delegation will make the first of two planned visits to Myanmar's northern neighbour and largest investor from May 8-18, top NLD officials said. Another delegation is scheduled to visit in June. Three high-ranking members of the NLD confirmed the visits, but did not say what would be discussed.
- "We don't know the detailed programme yet," Han Thar Myint said.
- The delegation would include executive committee members, lawmakers and representatives of ethnic regions, he said. Phyu Phyu Thin, a member of parliament for a Yangon township and a leading Aids activist, confirmed she would be part of the group.
- NLD spokesman Nyan Win said he did not know whether Suu Kyi would be part of the June delegation either.
- Speculation about an eventual visit to China by Suu Kyi began in late 2011, when she declined to rule one out during interviews with Chinese media. During a trip to South Korea in January, she said she hoped to visit China soon.
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