World Economic Forum Kicks Off in Naypyitaw

Hundreds of world leaders and industry chiefs met in Myanmar Wednesday for Asia's edition of the World Economic Forum, as the fast-changing nation woos foreign investors following the end of decades of harsh junta rule.

Some 900 delegates from more than 50 countries gathered in Naypyidaw for the three-day WEF on East Asia -- the region's equivalent of the annual gathering of business and political luminaries in the Swiss resort of Davos.

Foreign firms are queueing up to enter the country formerly known as Burma, tantalised by the prospect of an untouched market with a potential 60 million new consumers in addition to Myanmar's well of cheap labour.

They include Coca-Cola, which has returned to Myanmar after an absence of more than six decades and opened a new bottling plant on Tuesday, and consumer products giant Unilever which said it will soon manufacture toiletries in the country for the domestic market.

"Many important people are trying to see the president," a government official told AFP as the WEF got underway. "But of course he can not meet everyone."

President Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government has surprised the world since coming to power two years ago with dramatic political and economic changes that have led to the lifting of most Western sanctions.

Hundreds of political prisoners have been freed, democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi has been welcomed into a new parliament and tentative ceasefires have been reached in the country's multiple ethnic civil wars.

On the eve of the conference, former general Thein Sein said in a radio address to the nation that all remaining prisoners of conscience would soon be freed.

Activists say some 200 political prisoners remain in jail and accuse Myanmar of using a series of headline-grabbing amnesties for political gain.

Both Thein Sein and Suu Kyi are...