Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi is not a saint; she is more than a saint.

Since Suu Kyi entered politics in 1988, Burma’s international profile has risen from relative obscurity to the status of one of the world’s most important fronts in the global struggle for freedom and democracy.

To a great extent, this has been due to Suu Kyi’s courage and charisma. Through sheer force of personality, she has transformed her country’s political aspirations into a cause that enjoys the support of people around the world.

But Suu Kyi’s compelling image is also largely a product of her tormentors’ heavy-handed attempts to silence her. The recent mockery of a trial against her, for instance, thrust her back into the media spotlight and put her incredible grace under pressure on full display.

Perhaps this is why the Burmese generals seem to feel entitled to use Suu Kyi’s iconic image for their own ends: after all, they may reason, they made her the martyr she is today. 

Whenever it suits their purposes, Burma’s rulers loosen her shackles and even act like they are ready to respond to her calls for dialogue. Usually this happens when they need to deflect intense domestic and international pressure—or when there is something to be gained, such as a relaxation of sanctions.

The trouble is that Suu Kyi is not just the saintly figure she is made out to be. When she says she wants to talk, she means business.
 
Now, Suu Kyi is meeting with three Rangoon-based Western diplomats to discuss economic sanctions against Burma. Although the details of their discussions have not yet emerged, these talks, and two earlier meetings with a junta liaison, have generated considerable buzz, raising hopes of a breakthrough, mixed with anxiety over how the junta will attempt to spin this recent development.

In all probability, these talks will end in another impasse once the generals have gained whatever they expect to get from them, or realize that their machinations are not working. And when they do fail, as they almost certainly will, the regime will be quick to argue that Suu Kyi’s obstinacy was the cause.

For the past 21 years, Burma’s rulers have blamed Suu Kyi for most of the country’s problems. In particular, they accuse her of instigating the West’s punitive actions against the regime.

But let’s be clear: the sanctions are in place because of the junta’s egregious behavior, not because Suu Kyi’s moral authority is so irresistible that the world’s most powerful nations feel obliged to support her.

The regime has earned the world’s opprobrium with its poor human rights record, brutal military offensives against ethnic minorities and ruthless crackdowns on dissidents. Unless the junta can somehow prove that Suu Kyi made them commit these outrages, it is ludicrous to suggest that she is responsible for the sanctions.

Suu Kyi has spent most of the past 20 years in detention, cut off from the outside world. She has only rarely had an opportunity to publicly state her position on sanctions. In 1996, for instance, she asked tourists to shun Burma to send the regime a message as it launched “Visit Myanmar Year.”

Now, after years of being blamed for the sanctions, Suu Kyi has signaled that she would like to help the regime remove these barriers to the country’s development. Last week, she sent a letter to Burma’s paramount leader, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, asking him to allow her to meet with foreign diplomats so she can learn more about the sanctions. 

Suu Kyi wrote that in order to “effectively work for lifting sanctions … I believe that we need to try at first to understand about all sanctions imposed on Burma; understand about the extent of losses due to sanctions imposed on Burma; and understand about the positions of governments which imposed sanctions on Burma.”

Before today’s meeting with diplomats from the US, UK and Australia, Suu Kyi met twice with Aung Kyi, the regime’s “relations minister,” who was appointed in 2007 as the generals’ go-between with the opposition leader.

Last month, the US announced plans to modify its tough policy of isolating the military regime. Instead of relying on sanctions alone, the Obama administration said that it would instead try to engage the junta through high-level talks. Soon after this new policy was unveiled, the regime’s prime minister and foreign minister visited New York to attend the UN General Assembly, where American and Burmese officials held a meeting.

But this does not mean that the sanctions’ days are numbered. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who met Burmese officials, told a US Senate panel: “Lifting or easing sanctions at the outset of a dialogue without meaningful progress on our concerns would be a mistake.”
 
The benchmark set by the US is clear.