JAKARTA (Reuters) – Myanmar’s military rulers have agreed to meet a U.N. envoy in March to discuss the country’s “roadmap to democracy,” including its plans to bar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from taking part in elections, the envoy said on Thursday.

In a surprise move, the former Burma’s ruling generals this month announced a referendum in May on a new constitution, to be followed by an election in 2010. If held, the poll would be the first since a 1990 election whose outcome the military ignored.

“What is important for us is to work together with them, with the neighboring countries, with ASEAN and the international community to enhance the credibility of this constitutional process, to make national reconciliation more inclusive,” said Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations special envoy to Myanmar.

Gambari, speaking to reporters after meeting Indonesia’s foreign minister in Jakarta, said he would visit Myanmar in the first week in March. The junta had previously proposed a mid-April date.

Asked about Myanmar’s plan to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in the proposed elections, Gambari said that was “one of the issues that I intend to discuss with the authorities.”

Suu Kyi would be barred from the 2010 elections because she had been married to a foreigner, violating the newly drafted constitution, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Myanmar’s generals last held elections in 1990, but ignored the result when Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has spent more than 12 of the past 18 years under some form of detention.

(Reporting by Adhityani Arga; Editing by Alex Richardson)