YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi received her first passport in 24 years on Tuesday ahead of a planned trip to Norway and Britain.
An official from her National League for Democracy party said the passport was received Tuesday from the Home Ministry. The official asked not to be named because the matter was considered personal rather than party business.
Suu Kyi applied for the passport following recent political reforms that culminated in her election to parliament last month. Last year, a long-ruling military junta handed over power to an elected, nominally civilian government.
The passport is valid for three years. She has not had a passport since she returned to Myanmar in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother, and was required by law then to hand it in.
After becoming leader of the country's pro-democracy movement, she was put under house arrest for 15 of the following 22 years of military rule. Her confinement kept her from attending the ceremony in Oslo at which she was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.
During intermittent periods of freedom, Suu Kyi declined opportunities to go abroad for fear she would not be allowed to re-enter Myanmar, and so was unable to visit her British husband, Michael Aris, before his death from cancer in 1999. They last saw each other in 1995, after which the junta denied Aris a visa.
Since her release in November 2010 from her last term of house arrest, Suu Kyi had been invited to visit by several foreign governments. Recently, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited her to the U.N. headquarters in New York where she once worked.
During a brief visit to Myanmar in April, British Prime Minister David Cameron also invited Suu Kyi to visit, saying it would be a sign of progress if she were able to leave and then return to carry out her duties as a lawmaker. Suu Kyi studied at Oxford University.
Suu Kyi replied that "two years ago I would have said thank you for the invitation, but sorry. But now I am able to say perhaps, and that's great progress."
