YANGON, Myanmar — On her first full day of freedom after more than seven years of house arrest, Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, demonstrated the enduring power of her popularity on Sunday, drawing thousands of jubilant supporters to a rally at which she pledged to lead them in a struggle for political change.
Though she spoke of reconciliation, the event itself was a challenge to the authority and control of the ruling military junta.
The size and enthusiasm of the crowd — the kind of outpouring of public support that had led the government to cut short her previous period of freedom in 2003 — suggested that she had emerged with her popularity and moral authority intact.
“Democracy is when the people keep a government in check,” she told the crowd outside her party’s headquarters here in the city once known as Rangoon. “To achieve democracy we need to create a network, not just in our country but around the world. I will try to do that. If you do nothing you get nothing.”
She positioned her movement as an active opposition to the military leaders but gave no specifics, and it was unclear what steps she would take next. She took pains not to be confrontational, leaving open the possibility of a new relationship with the generals who had imprisoned her.
“I’m going to work for national reconciliation. That is a very important thing,” she said, adding: “There is nobody I cannot talk to. I am prepared to talk with anyone. I have no personal grudge toward anybody.”
Nevertheless, she began the new relationship with a flat refusal to cooperate, according to a person close to the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In arranging for her release, that person said, the military had asked her to agree not to leave Yangon and not to give public speeches. When she refused, she was asked at least to wait awhile before speaking. She refused again and proceeded with her address on Sunday.
She spoke with the buoyancy and infectious joy that have characterized her addresses in the past, and her exchanges with the crowd were sometimes emotional.
“I need to know what you want first,” she said to the crowd. “Do you know what you want?”
She pointed to a middle-age man and her aides handed him a microphone. “We love you very much!” the man said. “And we need democracy!”
The microphone was passed to another man in the crowd who shouted wildly, “Today the entire country has been released from military slavery!”
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi did not respond or even smile, but only gestured that the microphone be passed to a woman nearby. The woman wept and cried, “I love you more than I love myself.”
The release of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, came just six days after an election engineered by the military to give it control over a civilian Parliament and government. Though the military will still hold power, there will be new political institutions and new officeholders who could alter the dynamics of her interactions with the government.
Her lawyers said she had been released without conditions, but it remained unclear what role the government expected her to play, what long-term limits it intended to set on her activities or whether it intended to open a dialogue with her.
She said she would be willing to meet with anybody, even the leader of the junta, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, saying at a news conference after the rally, “It will be very good if I can discuss with him the issues I care about.”
In what seemed a gesture of conciliation, the main government newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, reported her release in positive terms Sunday morning, saying that she had been granted a pardon because of good behavior and that the police “stand ready to give her whatever help she needs.”
It said she was being treated with leniency because she is the daughter of the nation’s founding hero, U Aung San, a general who was assassinated in 1947, and “viewing that peace, tranquillity and stability will prevail and that no malice be held against each other.”
It appeared that even divisions in her party, the National League for Democracy, were beginning to melt away as party members and former party members rallied around her.
“She belongs to the entire nation,” said U Khin Maung Swe, the leader of an opposition party that split with the National League over its decision to boycott the election. “We consider her a national leader and she does not belong to any single group or party.”
For Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, the moment seemed to be one of reassessment and recalculation as she explored issues that might have evolved during her seven-year absence.
At the news conference, she said she would consider changing her position on economic sanctions against the country formerly called Burma, which she has supported and which have been at the center of a policy of isolation and punishment of the junta by Western nations. “If the people really want sanctions to be lifted, I will consider it,” she said. “This is the time that Burma needs help.”
She said she had been listening to radio broadcasts up to six hours a day during her arrest in the hope of understanding the people, and told her supporters she wanted to hear from them.
“Please let us know what you are thinking, what is on your mind,” she said at the rally. “I would like to know over the last six years what changes have taken place.”
She also asked her supporters to join her campaign for change.
“I’m not going to be able to do it alone,” she said at the news conference. “One person alone can’t do anything as important as bringing genuine democracy to a country.”
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