Suu Kyi still junta's main challenger

---

YANGON, Feb 10 (AFP): Aung San Suu Kyi's soft voice and demeanour belie a steely resolve in the long and painful struggle to bring democracy to Myanmar after decades of military dictatorship.
A slender woman who often wears flowers in her hair and prefers traditional Myanmar clothing, she has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest in a rambling, lakeside home after leading her party to a landslide victory in 1990 elections.
With the nation now seemingly on track for a constitutional referendum in May and new elections in 2010, she remains the leading opponent to the junta despite efforts to silence her by keeping her under house arrest.
Her confinement has only heightened her stature as a symbol of the nation's struggle against tyranny.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Myanmar's founding father General Aung San, but came relatively late to the political scene after spending much of her life abroad.
She studied at Oxford, married a British academic, had two sons and seemed settled into a life in Britain.
But when she returned to Yangon in 1988 to tend to her ailing mother, she found the city gripped by protests against the military.
Later that year she saw the aspirations for democracy evaporate as soldiers fired on crowds of demonstrators, leaving thousands dead.
Within days she took on a leading role in the pro- democracy movement, petitioning the government to prepare for elections and delivering impassioned speeches to hundreds of thousands of people at the city's glittering Shwedagon Pagoda.
In September 1988 she helped found the National League for Democracy (NLD), an alliance of 105 opposition parties, and campaigned across Myanmar for peaceful change.