Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi Honoured In Ireland

Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has received a rapturous welcome at a concert in Ireland.

The Nobel Prize laureate sat next to rock star Bono at the Electric Burma gig in Dublin.

The 2,000 -strong audience watched a performance by Riverdance, and music and readings from Irish stars including singers Declan O'Rourke and Damien Rice, and actress Saoirse Ronan.

The U2 singer thanked Ms Suu Kyi for choosing to visit Ireland during her first trip since being released from house arrest in Burma and presented her with an Amnesty Ambassador of Conscience Award.

"After all your years of wide-open heartache and in a closed space, your newly travelled road has brought you to Dublin to a great big bun fight in your honour," he said.

Bono added that Ireland and the rest of the world have e much to learn from Ms Suu Kyi, saying she teaches that "peace is not the absence of war around us, but the absence of war within us".

The democracy campaigner was under house arrest or in prison for 15 of the last 24 years until her release last November.

Ms Suu Kyi also delivered an open-air address and received the freedom of the city.

She said her experience in Dublin ws "unforgettable".

"I've been welcomed to Ireland as though I belong to you and I thank you with all my heart," she said.

The human rights campaigner, who at the weekend accepted a Nobel Peace Prize she won while under house arrest 21 years ago, is visiting Europe for the first time since 1988.

She will begin a visit to the UK on Tuesday, which will include a stay in Oxford, where she once studied.