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The younger son of Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has met his mother for the first time in a decade.

Aung San Suu Kyi greeted Kim Aris at Rangoon airport as he arrived.

Mr Aris had travelled to Thailand before his mother was freed on 13 November and waited to be granted a visa to Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been kept in detention for much of the past 21 years by the ruling generals.

The 65-year-old was seen smiling broadly at Rangoon airport and told reporters that she was very happy.

The opposition leader last saw Mr Aris in December 2000; since then he has been repeatedly denied permission to enter the country.

It has also been a decade since she last saw her elder son, Alexander, and she has grandchildren she has never met.

Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest less than a week after the country's first election for 20 years - which was widely condemned as a sham designed to consolidate the military rulers' power.

Kim Aris's visit has been described by British embassy officials in Bangkok as private and non-political.

But the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says that almost everything Aung San Suu Kyi does is watched carefully by both her devoted supporters and the ruling generals.

Mr Aris, who lives in the UK, is likely to find himself very much in the public eye, our correspondent adds.

Aung San Suu Kyi's husband, British academic Michael Aris, died in 1999. In the final stages of his battle with cancer, the military rulers refused him a visa to see his wife.

Many believe that if she were to leave Burma, the pro-democracy campaigner would never be allowed to return.