BANGKOK: Aung San Suu Kyi’s plans to travel abroad are the clearest sign yet of her trust in Myanmar reforms after more than two decades of house arrest and personal sacrifice, analysts said on Wednesday.

Suu Kyi, who became an icon for the nation’s struggle against dictatorship, refused to leave Myanmar even when the junta denied her dying husband a visa to visit her, because she feared she would never be allowed to return.

But the Nobel laureate now an elected politician has begun preparations to travel to Norway and Britain, her party said, adding that the tour could include other countries. Experts said the move is a sign of her faith in the sustainability of sweeping reforms under a new regime.

“Clearly this reflects a vote of confidence that she will be allowed back in,” said Michael Montesano, of the Institute for South East Asian Studies in Singapore.

“This trip is one more useful indicator of the progress we have seen Myanmar go through when we consider the fact that the people who run the country would have been thrilled at any point over the past 24 years to see her leaving because they would not let her back in.” Suu Kyi burst onto the Myanmar political scene in 1988 during a visit from Britain, where she was then living, that coincided with a failed student uprising against the former junta.

The generals ordered her first period of house arrest in 1989 and she spent 15 of the past 22 years locked up in her crumbling Yangon mansion.

She was released from her most recent period of detention in 2010, days after a general election, which was marred by claims of cheating and the absence of her party and saw the military and its political proxies claim an overwhelming victory.

But the new government under President Thein Sein, a former junta prime minister, has initiated a series of dramatic reforms culminating in a win for Suu Kyi and her party in April 1 by-elections hailed by the international community.

On a visit to Myanmar last week, Prime Minister David Cameron invited Suu Kyi for a June visit to Britain, the country where she settled with her husband Michael Aris after studying at Oxford University.

“Two years ago I would have said thank you for the invitation, but sorry. But now I’m able to say perhaps, and that is great progress,” Suu Kyi told Cameron in a meeting that also saw her give her first endorsement for the suspension of tough Western sanction against Myanmar.

Thailand-based Myanmar expert Aung Naing Oo, of the Vahu Development Institute, said that the democracy icon appeared “very confident” in the political process.

“By June she will probably know where she will stand when it comes to the politics, she will be by then in parliament,” he said.

“I think the government of Myanmar and the Myanmar people will benefit from this overseas travel... she can easily show that things have improved inside Myanmar and it is time for the international community to start engaging.” Suu Kyi’s life story is closely entwined with the fate of her impoverished homeland and her stellar rise into the political mainstream comes as Myanmar begins to shed its pariah status.

The daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero General Aung San left her homeland as a child and studied in Britain before marrying British academic Aris and having two sons.

Aris died in 1999, and in the final stages of his battle with cancer the junta denied him a visa to see his wife, while Suu Kyi refused to leave Myanmar to visit him, certain she would not be allowed to go back.

Former Australian ambassador to Myanmar Trevor Wilson said Suu Kyi’s decision to leave the country showed that “things are becoming more normal”.

“She can travel, go back home and continue her political activities, it’s the way it should be,” he said.Asked if he thought Suu Kyi had any reason to fear she would not be allowed to return to Myanmar once she went overseas, he said: “I’m quite sure she wouldn’t be going if that was the case.” —AFP