Myanmar president delays Thai trip amid Suu Kyi visit

Myanmar's president has postponed this week's official visit to Thailand, where opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is set to arrive on her first foreign trip in two decades, Bangkok officials said Monday. Thein Sein was to attend the World Economic Forum on East Asia, which will host Nobel laureate Suu Kyi as part of her historic first foray outside Myanmar in 24 years. "Thailand and Myanmar decided to postpone the Myanmar president's official visit to Thailand to 4-5 June," Thai foreign ministry spokesman Thani Thongpakdi told AFP, adding that Suu Kyi "will still come as planned". Suu Kyi, who won a seat in parliament in historic April by-elections, is set to see Myanmar communities during several days in Thailand. On Wednesday, she is expected to visit Myanmar migrant workers in Samut Sakhon Province, south of Bangkok, according to a local support group. Thailand's workforce is heavily reliant on low cost foreign workers, both legal and trafficked, with Myanmar nationals accounting for around 80 percent of the 2 million registered workers in the country. The veteran activist will also travel to the north of the country to meet some of the around 100,000 refugees displaced by conflict in Myanmar's eastern border areas. Officials at the Bangkok economic forum confirmed Suu Kyi's attendance -- including at two events on Friday -- and the cancellation by Thein Sein. Suu Kyi is scheduled to speak in an open discussion with World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and appear at a session on the role of Asian women. The former political prisoner's plan to leave her homeland for the first time since 1988 is the latest sign of dramatic political change sweeping through the country, where decades of outright military rule ended last year. Thein Sein is considered the architect of those reforms, which have been lauded by the international community and spurred the West to begin lifting tough sanctions, with the support of the opposition leader. The pair have held two official meetings since Suu Kyi's release from seven straight years of house arrest in November 2010 and the democracy icon has repeatedly affirmed her trust in the Myanmar leader. Suu Kyi, who was issued with a passport enabling her to travel abroad soon after her election to parliament, also plans to go to Europe, where she will address an International Labour Organization conference in Geneva on June 14. After that she will make a speech in Oslo on June 16 to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991 for her peaceful struggle for democracy, according to the Nobel Committee. Her British husband Michael Aris, who died in 1999 while she was in prison, and her two sons had accepted the Nobel medal on her behalf. Suu Kyi also intends to travel to Britain, where she lived for years with her family, and has been given the rare honour of addressing the country's parliament on June 21.