SINGAPORE, Feb 19: Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from running for election under the country’s new constitution because she had a foreign husband, Foreign Minister Nyan Win told his fellow Southeast Asian ministers on Tuesday.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said Nyan Win was clear on this position during a dinner cruise off the city-state’s waters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) foreign ministers.

“We did discuss that,” Yeo told reporters in response to a question on whether Aung San Suu Kyi would be allowed to run in the 2010 vote planned by Myanmar’s military rulers.

“He (Nyan Win) was quite clear that in the new constitution, a Myanmar citizen who has a foreign husband, who has children not citizens of Myanmar would be disqualified as was of the 1974 constitution.” Aung San Suu Kyi was married to Michael Aris, a British citizen who died of cancer in Britain in 1999. They have two children who are also British nationals.

Yeo said the foreign ministers expressed their views that the provision was “not keeping with the times” and “that certainly such a provision would be very odd in any other country in ASEAN.” But Yeo also said: “It is their own country, that is their own history and what can we do about it?” The ministers boarded a yacht on Singapore’s resort island of Sentosa for their annual “retreat,” which is meant to shed the usual formalities in diplomacy.

“It was just ourselves, the ministers. The atmosphere was very warm,” Yeo said, adding that a large part of the evening was spent discussing the developments in military ruled Myanmar.

He said UN special envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari will be allowed to return to the country in early March instead of April as had earlier been scheduled.

State-run media in Yangon said late on Tuesday Myanmar has completed drafting its proposed constitution, which the ruling junta plans to bring before voters in a referendum in May.The junta on Feb 9 unveiled its surprise plans for the referendum, which it says will set the stage for democratic elections in 2010.

Yeo said there remained “considerable scepticism” among the ministers about the details of the planned timetable, with one minister talking about the need for integrity in the process.

“We must have international credibility, it can’t just be an internal arrangement,” Yeo said.

Myanmar has had no constitution since 1988, when the current junta seized power by suppressing a pro-democracy uprising in a violent campaign believed to have left 3,000 dead.

The opposition National League for Democracy warned on Monday that in order to achieve democracy, Myanmar’s rulers must first respect the results of 1990 elections, won by Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.

The junta ignored her landslide victory, and instead has kept her under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years.—AFP