YANGON: Myanmar’s detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has appealed to the ruling junta against her detention, her party’s spokesman said on Saturday.

The appeal was sent by the opposition National League for Democracy party to military leaders in the administrative capital Naypyidaw in an attempt to secure her release from house arrest at her lakeside home in Yangon.

“One of her lawyers U Hla Myo Myint sent her appeal to the cabinet in Naypyidaw on Thursday. They accepted it and signed the receipt,” Nyan Win, an NLD spokesman told AFP. “We can say the way is open for her appeal for her release. It’s still too early to say how things will develop,” he said, adding that he believed an appeal hearing date may soon be set.

Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi approved the final draft of her legal appeal during a meeting with her lawyer Kyi Win in September. The NLD leader has been confined to her home for most of the past 19 years. 63-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi rarely meets anyone except her lawyer and doctor and in August refused a visit from United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari, apparently in protest at the lack of progress he was making on reform in Myanmar.

On Sept 14 she was given an intravenous drip for malnourishment by her doctor Tin Myo Win after refusing food deliveries for a month.

The junta, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, released 9,000 prisoners, including ten political prisoners, last month, in an amnesty ahead of elections planned for 2010 — in which Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from standing.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the junta never allowed it to take office.