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YANGON |
Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi smiles at supporters as she celebrates Thingyan, Myanmar's new year water festival, in front of her home in Yangon April 16, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun
(Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize laureate and newly elected lawmaker Aung San Suu Kyi will travel outside Myanmar for the first time in 24 years after accepting invitations to visit Norway and Britain in June, her party said on Wednesday.
Her travel caps months of dramatic change in Myanmar, including a historic by-election on April 1 that won her a seat in a year-old parliament that replaced nearly five decades of oppressive military rule.
Her trip will include a visit to the British city Oxford, where she attended university in the 1970s, said National League for Democracy (NLD) party spokesman Nyan Win.
"But I don't know the exact date yet," Nyan Win said, adding he did not know which country she would visit first. She has previously indicated that it would be Norway.
Suu Kyi, 66, was first detained in 1989, and spent 15 of the next 21 years in detention until her release from house arrest in November 2010. She refused to leave the country during the brief periods when she was not held by authorities, for fear of not being allowed to return.
She won one of her party's 43 seats in this month's by-election following a series of reforms under President Thein Sein, a former general, including the release of political prisoners, more media freedom, dialogue with ethnic militias and an exchange rate unification seen crucial to fixing the economy.
By Aung Hla Tun