Yangon: Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains in good spirits despite facing another year under house arrest while the military regime tries to secure its goal of long-term control, a source close to her party said on Tuesday.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 59, who has already spent a total of nine years in detention since 1989, was told Saturday she will be held for another 12 months.

The United States expressed deep disappointment at the move.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and a Nobel peace prize winner, had known for about a month that she was likely to remain under guard at her sprawling home in Yangon without
telephones and with little contact with the outside world, the source said.

Barriers remained on approaches to her home and low-key security stayed in place on Tuesday, according to an AFP correspondent.

“She had believed her detention would be prolonged for another year but said her morale is very high and health very good,” according to the source.

“She believes this move is aimed at further sidelining democracy and reform in Burma (Myanmar’s former name).”

Myanmar’s Prime Minister Soe Win said he did not know about the extension when pressed by his Thai counterpart at a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Laos.

“I asked him: What is the true story? He said he has to check. He didn’t have any details yet,” Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told reporters.

The US says Soe Win had a direct role in organising an attack on Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters in May 2003 that led to her latest period of house arrest.

The regime has previously said her confinement at home was for her own protection or she was resting.

Thaksin said Myanmar must reform before it takes over the leadership of the 10-nation ASEAN in 2006.

Myanmar has said it was pressing ahead with its seven-point “democracy road map”.

It said it will resume a national convention in February designed to help prepare the ground for a new constitution for a “disciplined” democracy and clear the way for “free and fair” elections.

The convention has been dismissed as a sham by international critics and boycotted by the NLD, whose deputy Tin Oo is also under house arrest.

Analysts said the sidelining of Aung San Suu Kyi ensured that the junta’s most influential critic would be out of public view as it pressed on with its programme. She is enduring her third stint of confinement since taking up the democracy struggle in 1988.

“Whatever promises Soe Win may have made about the road map to democracy, his assurances to ASEAN were extremely hollow,” said Debbie Stothard of pressure group Altsean.

Norway and the US also criticised the decision to extend her detention.

“We’re certainly disappointed, deeply disappointed, the junta continues to ignore international calls for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, U Tin Oo and all the political prisoners, and we call on them again to do so immediately and unconditionally,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.

The detention extension follows a power struggle at the heart of the junta that saw premier Khin Nyunt — who favoured dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi — sacked last month and put under house arrest.

But regime officials said the release of 9,248 prisoners ahead of the ASEAN summit showed their commitment to a process of national reconciliation. Only about 40 of those released were political dissidents.

“It is quite clear that the national convention and prisoner releases are to buy time and divert attention from the real situation,” Thai Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs adviser Sunai Phasuk told AFP.

“But once again they have shot themselves in the foot by hugely miscalculating and underestimating the weight of responsibility the world community has placed in Aung San Suu Kyi.”

The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962. The NLD under Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide in 1990 elections but has never been allowed to rule, a move which led to international sanctions against the regime.