UN Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown said today that Burma could be referred to the world body's Security Council over its repressive policies and failure to release Aung San Suu Kyi.

"I think there is a possibility... maybe," the official Bernama news agency quoted him as saying when asked about a referral.

Malloch Brown, who is visiting Malaysia, told Bernama that several members of the Security Council, apart from the United States, were pursuing the matter.

The UN official said that while Asia's human rights record had improved over the past decade, Burma was among the slowest in introducing reforms, releasing political detainees and moving towards democracy.

Washington is lobbying for an unprecedented UN Security Council resolution calling on Burma's military regime to change its repressive policies.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been confined to her lakeside home in central Rangoon since May 2003, has spent 10 of the past 17 years in detention.

Last December the United States pushed the UN Security Council to hold a briefing on human rights and other problems in Burma for the first time.