Aung San Suu Kyi sets date for US visit

BURMA'S democracy champion, Aung San Suu Kyi, will travel to the United States next Sunday on a trip that will see her awarded Washington's highest honour.
It will be her first visit to the US since she was put under house arrest in 1990.
"The lady will travel on September 16," said Nyan Win, spokesman for the Nobel laureate's National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
As part of her visit Suu Kyi, who was elected to parliament this year in a dramatic sign of Burma's reforms, will travel to Washington to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.
The medal is the top honour bestowed by the US Congress, which voted to award it to Suu Kyi in May 2008 when the prospect of her leaving Burma looked remote.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited the democracy champion to Washington when she paid a landmark visit to Burma last December.
Suu Kyi, 67, made her first forays outside her nation in more than two decades earlier this year, with visits to Thailand, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Britain and France.
She received rock star welcomes along the way and was lauded as a model of peaceful resistance to dictatorship.
The trip allowed her to finally give her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo and to receive awards granted during the almost two decades she spent under house arrest.
Burma was for decades ruled by an iron-fisted military junta, but a reformist government under former general President Thein Sein has freed political prisoners and allowed Suu Kyi's party back into mainstream politics.
Thein Sein is expected to head to the US during a UN summit, at roughly the same time as Suu Kyi.
US President Barack Obama last month waived visa restrictions so that Burma's leader could travel freely during the UN summit.
The Obama administration, hoping to encourage further reforms, has sent an ambassador to Burma for the first time in more than two decades and has eased restrictions on investment there by US companies.