By Agencies

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Aung San Suu Kyi will be visiting Thailand next week on her first trip abroad in more than two decades, her party has said.

"She will go to the World Economic Forum in Thailand," said Nyan Win, a spokesman for the Nobel Peace Prize winner's National League for Democracy, on Thursday.

The event is being held from May 30 to June 1.

Suu Kyi also plans to travel to Europe next month where she will accept in person her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, and address the British parliament and an International Labour Organisation conference in Geneva.

Suu Kyi was visiting Myanmar in 1988 to look after her sick mother when protests broke out and she has not left the country since then.

The 66-year-old opposition leader spent much of the last two decades locked up in her home by Myanmar's former junta, but has now been issued with a passport and is able to travel abroad for the first time in 24 years.

She had previously been unwilling to leave for fear the military rulers would not let her return.

Myanmar's relations with the international community have improved dramatically since a nominally civilian government took over last year and Suu Kyi won her first ever seat in parliament in elections last month.

After five decades of military rule, President Thein Sein's reforms included the release of political prisoners, more media freedom, dialogue with ethnic armed groups and an exchange rate unification seen as crucial to fixing the economy.