Honour for Suu Kyi at the White House

Aung San Suu Kyi was due to receive one of America's highest awards during a private meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday.

The Burmese political dissident is on her first official trip to the United States since the end of her 15-year house arrest.

The Obama administration kept the announcement of the meeting deliberately low key to avoid offending Burma's reformist president, Thein Sein.

  Sein was once a member of the military junta that Ms Suu Kyi campaigned against but is now viewed with cautious optimism by Washington after he initiated a series of political reforms.

In response, the US has normalised diplomatic relations and is considering whether to lift a ban on imports from Burma, the final element of its sanctions regime.

Suu Kyi said on Tuesday that she supported an easing of sanctions but that Burma had cleared only "the first hurdle" on the path to democracy.

She also warned in an interview recorded ahead of her 17-day American trip that her country must face up to the legacy of two decades in which boys were made to become child soldiers and girls were forced into sexual slavery.

Although feted abroad, the Nobel Peace Prize winner has faced criticism for her silence over the sectarian violence that erupted earlier this summer in Burma's north-western Rakhine State between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim Rohingya minority.

Ms Suu Kyi was also due to receive the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony attended by Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, and Laura Bush, the former First Lady, as well as Republican and Democrat lawmakers.

Congress awarded the medal in 2008. "We are honoured to have this hero with us and delighted to award her our nation's highest civilian honour," said Senator Mitch McConnell, the most senior Republican senator.