JAKARTA - Senior Asian officials on Friday backed a proposal to issue an unprecedented call for amnesty for Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesman said.

The officials from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Myanmar, discussed the "joint appeal" for Suu Kyi's release from house arrest during two days of talks in Indonesia, he said.

The officials had agreed to the petition in principle and would take the proposal back to their capitals for consideration at ministerial level.

"The senior officials' meeting agreed to give recommendations to their ministers to convey their position to Myanmar related to the problem of Aung San Suu Kyi," spokesman Teuku Faizasyah told AFP.

"In principle it has been accepted as a joint appeal in the framework of the senior officials' meeting. This is a positive development which will be submitted to the foreign ministers."

Indonesia backed issuing a tough statement calling for Suu Kyi's immediate release, he said.

Myanmar's junta recently extended the Nobel Peace laureate's confinement for 18 months after a trial widely seen as a sham.

ASEAN has never before called for Suu Kyi's release although the bloc last year ratified a new constitution enshrining democratic principles and basic standards of human rights.

Any joint appeal for Suu Kyi's release would signal a toughening of the bloc's attitude toward the junta and would be a departure from ASEAN's principle of noninterference in members' internal affairs, analysts said.

"They will not expel Myanmar or sanction it -- not yet -- but they will not sit impassively if the regime continues to act in this manner," Singapore Institute of International Affairs chairman Simon Tay said Thursday.

"If followed up, and the regime does respond, it can signal a diplomatic opening."

Thailand said last Friday it was pushing for a consensus among member states to ask Myanmar's military rulers to pardon Suu Kyi. Faizasyah said the initiative also had the full support of the Indonesian government.

Suu Kyi led her National League for Democracy to a landslide victory in elections in 1990, but the junta has refused to recognize the result and has kept her locked away in her lakeside home for 14 of the subsequent years.

As well as Myanmar, ASEAN also groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.