DHAKA: Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar opposition party faced calls to inject new blood into its ageing top ranks as it opened a landmark conference on Saturday dedicated to its youth wing.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner’s National League for Democracy (NLD), founded after a bloody crackdown on a failed popular uprising in 1988, is preparing for key parliamentary elections next year that could sweep it to power.

Maung Maung Oo, one of the organizers of the meeting of about 150 opposition party members aged 16 to 35, the first of its kind, said the aim was ‘to promote a new generation of leaders’.

‘Not only our party, but the whole country faces a generation gap,’ he told media, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1345 HRS, JULY 05, 2014