Shunmugam Jayakumar told parliament the government had issued a number of public statements expressing its opinion on Aung San Suu Kyi's fate.

"We have also spoken to the Myanmar authorities in private on many occasions," Jayakumar said.

In the most recent of such contacts, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong raised the issue with his Myanmar counterpart Khin Nyunt at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations annual leaders' summit in Bali on October 6, he said.

"While it will not be useful to reveal the details of such private exchanges let me say that we have made known our concerns," he said.

Jayakumar repeated Singapore's position that economic sanctions on Myanmar would not succeed in helping Aung San Suu Kyi's long campaign for democracy.

"Given the limited integration of Myanmar into the world economy the effect of sanctions will be only limited," he said.

While the United States and other nations have imposed sanctions on Myanmar, Singapore has maintained steady business ties with the isolated nation and is one of its biggest foreign investors.

"The situation in Myanmar is very complicated. Other countries may have their own views and their own way of approaching the issue. They may also have their own motives," Jayakumar said.

"Singapore must be guided by our own national interests. Singapore will continue to do whatever we can in our own way."

Aung San Suu Kyi is currently under house arrest in the Myanmar capital Yangon after a pro-junta mob attacked her entourage on May 30 while she was on a political tour in the north of the country.

The Nobel peace laureate was kept in secret detention for more than three months after the incident and was shifted to house arrest in September.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the junta refused to recognise the results.

It instead continued to rule the country with an iron fist, forcing Aung San Suu Kyi to spend more than seven years under house arrest.

Aung San Suu Kyi said last week she would refuse freedom until the junta released dozens of her colleagues who were jailed following the May 30 unrest.

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