BURMA'S detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was on "remarkable form" during a meeting with Western diplomats today, said the British ambassador in Rangoon, Andrew Heyn.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner met representatives from the US, Britain and Australia to discuss sanctions imposed on Burma after being given special permission for the meeting by the country's military junta.

It came after Ms Suu Kyi, who studied at Oxford University’s St Hugh’s College and is the widow of the late Oxford don Michael Aris, sent a letter to junta leader General Than Shwe saying she was ready to co-operate with the government in an effort to have the sanctions eased.

After the meeting, Mr Heyn told the BBC: "She was in remarkable form for someone who has been through what she has been through.

"She was very engaged in the subject, very interested in going into the detail of what she wanted to talk about, and she seemed, as ever, very eloquent and very, very engaged."

Ms Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest for much of the past 19 years after becoming the figurehead of opposition to the military regime after returing to her homeland in 1988 to nurse her dying mother.

Her father General Aung San was one of the key figures in Burma's drive for independence from Britain after the Second World War.