Aung San Suu Kyi meets with President of Myanmar

Two of the architects of political reconciliation in Myanmar – also known as Burma – met Wednesday for the first time since historic by-elections were held earlier this month. President Thein Sein and opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi discussed democratization, parliamentary affairs and a peace process with ethnic rebels, according to a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.

Burma Campaign UK’s director Mark Farmaner spoke about the significance of the meeting. “It’s being seen as very significant now, because at the last meeting in August it was considered they had agreed on a plan whereby the electoral laws in Burma would be reformed that would allow the NLD to register as a party and they would then take part in the by-elections and there would also be the release of some political prisoners," he said. "So that’s the process that has happened between now and August.”

Farmaner said Burma is facing a choice about the future of reform in the country: “Will Thein Sein the president today be saying to Suu Kyi ‘That’s it, you’re inside the parliament now, any further change you want you work inside the parliament’… or will he be prepared to find an additional mechanism and work with her… to take forward the next stages in reform. This will be quite a critical choice that is being made here about what he is prepared to do.”

Listen to the complete interview of Mark Farmaner with Christopher Wells: