Saddened at India moving away in most difficult days: Suu Kyi

"I was saddened to feel that we were drawn away from India, or rather India was drawn away from us during our most difficult days," Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace laureate and Myanmar's opposition leader, said delivering the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture here.

The National League for Democracy leader, who was under house arrest for over 21 years, was referring to the period when India established diplomatic relations with the military junta in the 1990s. India had initially supported the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar.

67-year-old Suu Kyi, whose father General Aung San -- regarded as Myanmar's independence hero -- was a personal friend of Nehru, last visited India in 1987 when she travelled to Shimla to join her husband Michael Aris, who was studying in the hill station.

Suu Kyi said Myanmar had not yet achieved the goal of democracy.

"We are trying and we hope that in this last battle, the people of India will stand by us and walk by the path they were able to proceed many years before," said Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi said she always has faith in the lasting friendship of India and Myanmar which was based on love and kinship between the people of the two countries.

"Governments come and go and that is what democracy is all about. But, people remain and as long as our people remain bound in understanding and mutual respect, the friendship between our two countries will last far into the future," she said.

She said Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were the two Indian leaders to whom she felt "closest" and recalled how and she and India's first prime minister had many things in common.

The India-educated pro-democracy icon said many of the challenges faced by Gandhi and Nehru along the path to India's independence were the ones her movement had been facing over the course of its struggle which will mark its quarter century next year.(MORE) SKU GSN VMN

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