Aung San Suu Kyi invited to pick up Europe rights prize

(STRASBOURG) - The European Parliament on Monday invited Myanmar's democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to come pick up a rights prize she was awarded by the assembly in 1990.

The parliament's president Jerzy Buzek opened a plenary session welcoming her recent release from house arrest and noted she had been one of the first recipients two decades ago of its prestigious Sakharov Prize, also awarded to the likes of Nelson Mandela and Kofi Annan.

"Unfortunately she could not pick it up personally 20 years ago so I invite her to come to a parliament plenary," he said.

Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was also on the agenda of talks by European Union foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, but the EU's diplomacy chief Catherine Ashton said "caution" was the watchword among member states.

"It's essential that all remaining political detainees be set free," she told a Brussels news conference. "We took a cautious approach to the situation as it currently stands."