YANGON - Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has welcomed US plans to engage diplomatically with the country's military rulers in a bid to promote reform, her lawyer said Thursday.

Her comments came a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the possibility of an eventual easing or lifting of sanctions on the junta if US engagement produces political changes in Myanmar.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said that direct engagement is good," her lawyer Nyan Win told AFP after meeting her at her home in Yangon to discuss her appeal against her recently extended house arrest.

"She accepts it but she says that engagement must be with both sides," he said, adding that Suu Kyi was referring to the need for Washington to speak to both the government and the opposition.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Myanmar due to its continued detention of Suu Kyi and its refusal to recognise her National League for Democracy's (NLD) victory in the country's last elections in 1990.

The junta sentenced her to an extra 18 months in detention at her lakeside home in August after an incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her house.

The move effectively ruled her out of elections due in 2010 that the ruling generals have promised in Myanmar, which was previously known as Burma.

Clinton told reporters on Wednesday that "we believe that sanctions remain important as part of our policy, but by themselves they have not produced the results that had been hoped for on behalf of the people of Burma."

Nyan Win, who is also the spokesman for the NLD, said that the party was still formulating its policy on sanctions and would inform the regime of its decision before making it public.

"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has already said regarding sanctions that we have to inform the authorities by letter," he said.

Suu Kyi has previously discouraged foreign investment in Myanmar in a bid to pile pressure on the junta, but US Senator Jim Webb said after a rare meeting with her in August that she would not oppose the lifting of some sanctions.