Kuala Lumpur: Meeting Myanmar’s long-detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for the first time can be a memorable experience especially if you blurt out that you consider her very attractive.

Razali Ismail, a former U.N. special envoy who is one of the few foreigners to have repeatedly met Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi in recent years, revealed in a book released Friday that Suu Kyi made an un-expected impression when they first met on a hot, humid day in June 2000 at her lakeside home, where she has often been under house arrest.

“She emerged, cool and composed, in a traditional blue blouse and sarong, with (a jasmine flower) in her hair,” Razali wrote in “Number One Wisma Putra,” a compilation of original anecdotes by Malaysian diplomats, published by Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry.

“There was no question about it she looked very attractive, what with the smell of the (jasmine) in the air at close quarters,” Razali added.

“At an early part of my conversation with her, I said, ‘You are not only very courageous but also attractive.’ It was obviously an unthinkable faux pas,” wrote Razali, who resigned his U.N. job in January because Myanmar’s military junta had not let him visit the country since March 2004.
Suu Kyi has been detained for 11 of the past 17 years, continuously since May 2003, by Myanmar’s current junta that seized power after suppressing mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 1988. Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent work to promote democracy in her Southeast Asian homeland.

Razali was appointed a special envoy of the U.N. Secretary General in April 2000. He helped successfully helped mediate a dialogue between Myanmar’s junta and Suu Kyi in October 2000, but hopes for democratic change evaporated as relations between the junta and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party deteriorated.

Despite Razali’s apparently accidental compliment to Suu Kyi, he said he got along very well with her throughout more than 20 meetings spanning nearly four years, despite warnings “that she was glacial.”

Razali praised Suu Kyi’s political prowess, saying that “her basic instincts (on the Association of South-east Asian Nations, or ASEAN) can be said to have been proven right.”

“I once told her that if she ever became prime minister, she could give the other ASEAN prime ministers a run for their money debating democracy and development,” Razali wrote.

Myanmar, also called Burma, has become an embarrassment to ASEAN because of its failure to restore democracy and release political prisoners. ASEAN’s pressure on the junta has so far been fruitless.

Razali, who visited Myanmar 14 times in 2000-04, wrote that he does “not see any prospects of change (for Myanmar), as there are no internal dynamics operating there.”