OPPOSITION PARTY MEETS IN BURMA : PRO-DEMOCRACY LEADER DRAWS NEW BATTLE LINES.

Byline: Robert Horn Associated Press 

Despite a crackdown that detained hundreds of her supporters, Burma's pro-democracy leader opened an opposition congress Sunday that signaled a renewed courage among Burmese to stand up to their military rulers.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident, threw down her biggest challenge to the ruling junta since her release from six years of house arrest last July.

In her opening speech, Suu Kyi said her National League for Democracy would ``increase our actions to fulfill the will of the people and bring about national reconciliation.''

Her challenge signaled that she no longer would allow the regime to simply ignore her repeated calls for dialogue to bring democracy to Burma.

Wearing a traditional sarong, her hair tied back in jasmine flowers, Suu Kyi spoke at her home from a bamboo-and-thatch pavilion built especially for the event. Banners displayed the emblem of her party, a fighting peacock.

Though 300 supporters applauded every sentence and chanted ``Long Live Aung San Suu Kyi,'' only 17 were original delegates to the party congress, the opposition's most important planned meeting since it swept parliamentary elections in July 1990.

At least 238 other delegates and 24 other party members were detained in a nationwide roundup last week intended to prevent the meeting, Suu Kyi said.

Suu Kyi's party won 392 of 458 contested seats in the 1990 vote, but the military rulers never let the parliament convene.

Suu Kyi took time out from the conference to make her weekly address to the public. Some 8,000 people - the biggest crowd in years - gathered outside the gates of her compound, indicating a renewed courage among Burmese who many believed had been cowed by the regime.

Authorities made no move to interfere with the crowd. The only security forces visible were traffic police guiding vehicles away from the throng.