There was no word on the numbers of arrests and releases in other cities where thousands of people were reported to have protested against military rule, but Nyan Win said a senior NLD member was arrested in the second city of Mandalay overnight.
SMALL HOPES
Yet, there was a small hope international pressure on the junta to begin talks with the NLD, which won a landslide election victory in 1990 the generals ignored, might be having an impact on a regime that rarely takes notice of the outside world.
U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, told reporters on Friday after briefing the Security Council on his four-day visit to Myanmar he saw a "window of opportunity" for talks between the junta and Suu Kyi, who met Gambari twice.
"From my own conversation, she appears to be very anxious to have a proper dialogue" provided there were no preconditions, Gambari said.
There has been no word from Suu Kyi, 62, who has spent 12 of the past 18 years in detention and is confined to her house in Yangon without a telephone and requiring official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.
But, in what appeared to be another move aimed at deflecting international anger, state television broadcast rare footage of Suu Kyi for the first time in four years on Friday night.
It referred to her respectfully as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a departure from past practice when her father's name, Aung San, was dropped to deny her link to the nation's independence hero.
Britain, France and the United States -- which is pushing for tougher sanctions against the junta -- have circulated a draft statement at the U.N. Security Council that demanded the junta free political detainees and talk to the opposition.
It would have no legal force, but if a strongly worded statement were approved by China, the closest thing the junta has to an ally, it would send a forceful message to the generals.
The junta says 10 people were killed in the crackdown on protests which began with small marches against huge fuel price rises in August and escalated after troops fired over the heads of protesting monks.
Western governments say the toll is likely to be far higher.
