| Myanmar's military junta is pushing ahead with its promised mass release of prisoners and a top dissident who was democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's closest aide will be among them, a senior official said on Thursday. But Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu told Reuters in an interview he did not know when Suu Kyi would be freed from house arrest at her lakeside villa in Yangon, where she is without a telephone and requires permission to receive visitors. "I don't know when this house arrest will be lifted," he said. The same applied to Tin Oo, deputy leader of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, he added. But the mass release involving nearly 4,000 people held "inappropriately" in jail was real, he said, disputing reports it was fizzling out. |