Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar opposition leader, has had talks with a government official appointed as a liaison minister. News agencies quoted unnamed sources as saying the detained opposition leader was picked up by a convoy of cars on Thursday afternoon and driven to a government guesthouse for the talks. There was no immediate word on the purpose of the brief release from house detention in which she was allowed to talk to Aung Kyi, a retired general appointed by the military government earlier this month to hold talks with the opposition. Footage of the meeting was broadcast on state television. After an hour, she was returned to her villa in Yangon where she has been under house arrest for the past 12 years. The move follows a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Yangon and elsewhere in the country that human rights groups say left hundreds dead. In the wake of the crackdown Myanmar's military rulers have been under growing international pressure to open a dialogue with the opposition. Earlier this month the UN special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, urged Myanmar's leaders to appoint an intermediary to begin talks with the opposition.