Suu Kyi to deliver Nobel Peace Prize speech

Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was set Saturday to deliver her speech for the Nobel Peace Prize she won two decades ago, crystallising the success of her relentless struggle.

Wearing a trademark flower in her hair, a traditional lungi waist garment and purple silk scarf, she walked into the cavernous Oslo City Hall, packed with Norwegian dignitaries and royals as well as Burmese exiles.

Suu Kyi's visit to Oslo after years of house arrest is itself testimony to the past year's sweeping political change in her Southeast Asian homeland, whose long-ruling generals have promised to follow a path to democracy.

When Suu Kyi won the honour in 1991, she declined to accept it in person out of fear that the junta would bar her return to the country, also called Burma, where "The Lady" had become a potent symbol of non-violent defiance.

This week, back in Europe for the first time in 24 years, she is being cheered by Western supporters and Burmese exiles along a whirlwind tour that started in Switzerland and will also take her to Britain, Ireland and France.

In Norway, she was greeted with flowers and songs by hundreds of Burmese, many with her party's Fighting Peacock flag painted on their faces, then dined with the country's political leaders and royals.

On Saturday, she was set to meet members of the Nobel Committee and have an audience with King Harald and Queen Sonja at the Royal Palace before delivering her Nobel lecture at Oslo City Hall from 1:00 pm (1100 GMT).

Suu Kyi -- who turns 67 next week and who fell ill in Switzerland, blaming the strain of jetlag and exhaustion -- said Friday that she was on a journey of "rediscovery and discovery, seeing the world with new eyes."

The world around her has certainly changed since she learnt in 1991 that she had won the Nobel, listening to a shortwave radio, isolated in the crumbling lakeside mansion in Yangon that would be her prison for a total of 15 years.

Her husband Michael Aris and their two sons, Kim and Alexander, accepted the award on her behalf. When her husband died of cancer in 1999, Suu Kyi could not be by his side, again fearing she would not be allowed to come home.

Then, last year, the junta surprised the world with reforms that have brought cautious hope for real change, rewarded with visits since by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Ex-general President Thein Sein has freed hundreds of political prisoners, welcomed Suu Kyi's party back into mainstream politics and signed ceasefires with ethnic rebel groups, leading Western nations to ease sanctions.

Suu Kyi's Europe tour itself is regarded as a milestone event.

"It's very significant that she is being able to travel," said Myanmar expert Donna Guest of the London-based rights group Amnesty International. "It illustrates the new trust between her and the government.

"The fact that she is travelling to so many countries is significant too. Even a year ago we would not have expected this to happen."

When she arrived in Oslo on Friday, Suu Kyi warned that "we're certainly not at the end of the road. By no means. We are just starting out."

"And this road is not going to be a straightforward, smooth one. There are going to be many twists and turns and there'll be obstacles. But we'll have to negotiate these in the spirit of national reconciliation."

Suu Kyi's trip has been clouded by ethnic strife at home, regional clashes between majority Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingya.

Fifty people have been killed and scores wounded in the clashes in Rakhine state, state media said Saturday, as the United Nations warned of "immense hardship" faced by thousands displaced by rioting.

To her many admirers, the Oxford-educated daughter of independence hero General Aung San is one of history's great human rights defenders.

"It is not power that corrupts but fear," she said in her most famous speech, in 1990. "Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."

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Nuclear-armed foes Pakistan, India talk peace over lunch

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stood side-by-side in New Delhi on Sunday at the highest-level meeting on each other's soil in seven years as the nuclear-armed foes seek to normalize ties.

Relations have warmed since Pakistan promised its neighbor most favored nation trade status last year, although a $10 million bounty offered by Washington for a Pakistani Islamist blamed for the 2008 attacks on Mumbai has stirred old grievances.

Without giving details, the two leaders said they discussed a wide range of issues during a "fruitful" meeting before sharing lunch. Singh said he hoped to make his first visit to Pakistan at a convenient date.

"We would like to have better relations with India. We have spoken on all topics that we could have spoken about and we are hoping to meet on Pakistani soil very soon," Zardari said as the two men emerged from Singh's residence.

On his first visit to India as part of the 40-member delegation, Zardari's son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, stood behind the leaders at the briefing, possibly a sign of his growing role in politics.

"Relations between India and Pakistan should become normal. That's our common desire," Singh said. "We have a number of issues and we are willing to find tactical, pragmatic solutions to all those issues and that's the message that president Zardari and I would wish to convey."

Zardari's visit proceeded as rescue teams, backed by helicopters and sniffer dogs, searched for 124 Pakistani soldiers and 11 civilians engulfed by an avalanche on Saturday near the 6,000-meter-high Siachen glacier in Kashmir -- known as the world's highest battlefield.

India and Pakistan fought two wars over Siachen and hundreds have died there, mostly from the inhospitable conditions.

India has yet to comment on the disaster.

ISLAMIST SHADOW

The continued freedom of Islamist Hafiz Saeed, suspected of masterminding an attack by Pakistan-based gunmen on India's financial capital, Mumbai, in 2008 that killed 166 people, caused some friction in the days before the meeting.

India is furious Pakistan has not detained Saeed, despite handing over a dossier of evidence against him. Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Friday that anyone with concrete proof to prosecute Saeed should present it to the courts.

And with Zardari and Singh both suffering major domestic problems, prospects are low for fixing the complex stand-off over disputed Kashmir, the trigger of two of three wars between the two countries since independence from Britain in 1947.

Lasting Pakistan-India peace would go a long way to smoothing a perilous transition in Afghanistan as most NATO combat forces prepare to leave by the end of 2014.

India and Pakistan fought their most recent war in 1999, shortly after both sides declared they possessed nuclear weapons. Hundreds died on the disputed border in Kashmir before Pakistani troops and militants were forced to withdraw.

Zardari is also due to visit the shrine in western India of a revered Sufi Muslim saint seen as a symbol of harmony between South Asia's often competing religions.

Born in a village in what is now Pakistan, Singh has pushed for peace during his two terms in office, but his efforts were knocked off track by the 2008 ouster of former President Pervez Musharraf, with whom he had built trust.

The three-day rampage by 10 Pakistani gunmen in Mumbai later that year derailed the peace process - aimed at finding a solution to Kashmir and other feuds along one of the world's most heavily armed borders. Talks only resumed a year ago.

Informal meetings, during international cricket matches, or in this case before Zardari's pilgrimage to the Sufi shrine, have become the hallmark of Singh's diplomacy.

In November, Singh met Gilani in the Maldives and promised to open a new chapter in their troubled history.

Hopes are focused on resolving the conflict at the Siachen glacier and a dispute over an oil-rich river estuary called Sir Creek.

Musharraf, the last Pakistani head of state to visit India in 2005, has said both issues were as good as fixed while he was in office.

(Additional reporting by Anurag Kotoky; Editing by Ron Popeski)

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Support for peace talks growing, Afghan diplomat says

KABUL (Reuters) - Support is building among Afghanistan's regional neighbors for a comprehensive peace process with the Taliban, but Pakistan's backing and access to insurgent leaders are crucial to getting stalled talks on track, a top Afghan diplomat said.

Jawed Ludin, the deputy foreign minister and senior negotiator in talks with Washington on an Afghan-U.S. strategic pact, also said the two allies were near agreement on a deal to curb controversial night raids by NATO troops on Afghan homes.

But Ludin - the main architect of Afghan foreign policy - said both sides had failed to communicate the benefits of the pact and dampen anxiety among Afghans that foreigners were preparing to abandon the country after a 2014 withdrawal of Western combat troops.

"We need to communicate better, we need to explain it better. There are various interests, there are people who play this up the wrong way, they explain it the wrong way," Ludin told Reuters late on Saturday ahead of a trip to Australia.

"Some would like to see this as our inability to succeed and then the end of commitment."

The United States and Afghanistan have for months been negotiating on a strategic pact for a long-term presence in Afghanistan of U.S. advisers and possibly some elite troops, while at the same time trying to draw the Afghan Taliban and other insurgents into twin-track peace talks.

But in March the Taliban suspended exploratory negotiations with the United States, seen by backers as a way to end the country's conflict, while refusing to meet President Hamid Karzai's government, calling its officials U.S. "stooges".

Ludin, a former chief of staff and spokesman for Karzai, said he was confident an agreement would soon be signed with Qatar to open a Taliban representative office in the Gulf state as a vehicle for talks, about which he was "positive".

Ludin said he also held strong hopes that both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia's governments would weigh in to give political momentum to Afghan government efforts to engage the Taliban.

"We are working under the assumption that once this process moves, and once we bring some of the other contributing elements to this, we need to make sure we create an environment with support from not just Pakistan, but other countries - notably Saudi Arabia - but above all Pakistan," said Ludin.

"I think at the regional level, we seem to be coming closer to a consensus that is basically the need of the day, and that there will have to be a political process, there will have to be something done to end violence and bring peace to Afghanistan."

The "key contribution" for talks to succeed would need to be from Pakistan, where the Afghan president travelled in February to ask for access to Taliban leaders belonging so the so-called Quetta Shura (council), Ludin said.

Named after the Pakistani city where they are said to be based, Shura members would be the decision makers in any substantive peace negotiations. But Pakistan denies any top insurgents enjoy sanctuary within its borders.

"SPOILER" ALERT

"There are a number of elements and we all know what those are. The question of access, the question of providing a conducive environment for contacts to be established and for talks to take place wherever they are," Ludin said.

"We need to bring about an environment where leadership of the Taliban can viably use that office to engage with Afghanistan, with the government of Afghanistan, in constructive forward-looking talks about the peace process and about taking this step forward."

A revitalized peace process would be in the interests of the entire region, Ludin said, although some groups he would not name were acting as "spoilers" to a negotiated peace after decades of war during which millions of Afghans have fled.

While he would not clarify whether he meant neighboring nations, reports in the United States this week said American officials believed Iranian agents had been active in trying to instigate violent protests in Afghanistan after the inadvertent burning of Korans by a U.S. soldier at a NATO base.

"There is no doubt that there are various diverging interests at work," Ludin said. "What is important is that we really do not create excuses and opportunities for spoilers, for elements that wish to undermine the current transition. That should be our priority and that will be our priority."

Karzai has demanded U.S. and other foreign troops withdraw from Afghan villages after an American soldier allegedly massacred 17 civilians in Kandahar, while the burning of Korans in February triggered protest riots that raged for a week.

Afghanistan had signed strategic agreements with several countries contributing troops to the 130,000-strong NATO coalition in the country, including Britain and Italy. The government would soon finalize one more with close U.S. ally Australia, Ludin said before leaving for Canberra.

The transition to fully Afghan-provided security to be completed by 2014 was poorly understood, he said, as the country would then enter a period of transformation, with Western aid and advisers likely to remain in the country.

Economic aid would also continue to ensure no sudden economic collapse and flight of capital as wealthy Afghans and businesses moved their assets to safety elsewhere.

"In the last 10 years, it has been about military security assistance to Afghanistan. Now that we have our own institutions, we don't need that kind of support. What we need is your political commitment ... and also not least your economic assistance in the long term," he said.

Ludin said the government had made clear it was interested in a political solution with the Taliban and denied strategic partnership talks with the U.S. and other nations were inconsistent with Islamist demands for foreign troops and advisers to leave the country, and for Islamic-focused reform.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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France says Syria's Assad pretending to accept peace plan

PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Thursday he was not optimistic that international peace mediator Kofi Annan's plan for ending fighting in Syria would succeed and accused President Bashar al-Assad of only pretending to be committed to it.

"Can we be optimistic or not? I am not, because I think Bashar al-Assad is tricking us," Juppe told journalists. "He is pretending to accept Kofi Annan's 6-point plan while at the same time still using force."

(Reporting by Catherine Bremer and John Irish; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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