'Exhausted' Suu Kyi to visit Swiss parliament

Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was due to visit Switzerland's parliament on day two of her European tour on Friday, after cancelling her engagements the previous evening due to exhaustion. The opposition leader had been scheduled to dine with Swiss government officials on Thursday night but instead spent the evening in her hotel in Bern after taking ill during a press conference. Suu Kyi, who has not visited Europe since 1988 after many years under house arrest, met for talks with Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter but cut short the following press  conference, telling reporters she was "totally exhausted" and not used to the time difference. Suu Kyi was scheduled to visit the Swiss parliament on Friday at 8:30 am (0630 GMT), bringing her stay in the country to a close. She will take a helicopter to Zurich airport before travelling on to Oslo where she will formally accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday. Later in the trip Suu Kyi will address Britain's parliament and receive an Amnesty International human rights award in Dublin from rock star Bono, followed by a stop in France. The veteran activist, who is about to turn 67, began the trip on Thursday with a speech at the UN to a conference of the International Labour Organization. She called for "democracy friendly" investment in her impoverished country and a political settlement to end ethnic bloodshed. Her visit marks a new milestone in the political changes that have swept her country also known as Burma since decades of military rule ended last year, ushering in a quasi-civilian government and giving her party seats in parliament. Much of the previous quarter-century she had been confined to her Yangon home on the orders of the ruling junta or afraid to leave the country in case she was barred from returning. But as she departed on her trip on Wednesday violence continued to shake western Myanmar, pitting Buddhist Rakhines against stateless Muslim Rohingya, adding to longer-running ethnic conflicts in other parts of the country. More than 30,000 people have been displaced by the clashes in Rakhine state, where the government has declared a state of emergency, a senior local official said Thursday, while at least 29 people have been killed. "Without the rule of law such communal strife will only continue," said Suu Kyi. "We need the cooperation of all peoples to bring this to an end."