"I think the prime minister is truly committed to take this process to a transition to democracy," Razali told Reuters on his return to Kuala Lumpur after a four-day visit to Yangon.

The veteran Malaysian diplomat said Suu Kyi -- whom he met twice in the villa to which she is confined -- was amenable to making the process work.

"There's no sense of recriminations. She is not asking for a pound of flesh," he said.

UN envoy Razali Ismail yesterday wrapped up his twelfth visit to Myanmar after a flurry of meetings with the junta and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi in his push for democracy in the military-run state.

Razali spent three days shuttling between separate talks with Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt and others in a bid to move forward the "roadmap" to democracy Yangon announced last August.

"His mission went well," a source close to the envoy's visit told AFP after Razali's departure from Yangon to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

"It is too early to say if there has been progress, maybe we will see some results in the next few weeks," the source said, adding that Aung San Suu Kyi, whom Razali met twice in two days, remained in high spirits.

"As usual, she was very pugnacious and determined," the source said of the Nobel peace laureate, enduring her third period of house arrest since 1988.

Razali was kept in a tight security cocoon during his trip, which authorities did not publicise, and reporters could not approach him as he left his Yangon hotel for the airport.

Yangon's democracy "roadm-ap" has been met with scepticism from Western governments, which tightened sanctions against Myanmar after last May's brutal crackdown on Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD).

The NLD won a landslide 1990 election victory but was never allowed to rule.

But Razali appears to have thrown his support whole-heartedly behind the process and held a series of meetings with government officials, foreign diplomats and ethnic leaders.