Apparently unable to hold her tears, Aung San Suu Kyi came out of the house she has been detained in since 2003 as the monks were let through a roadblock.

At least 2,000 monks were staging a sixth day of protests through the streets of the main city of Rangoon.

Up to 10,000 marched through Mandalay with protests also taking place in five townships across Burma.

Suu Kyi has spent 11 of the last 18 years in detention.

In 1990, her party won national elections, but these were annulled by the army and she was never allowed to take office. Her latest period of house arrest began in May 2003.

The area around University Avenue where Suu Kyi's house is located has been closed to traffic since the wave of protests began.

But in what appears to be an unprecedented move, the guards allowed the monks to walk past her home.

Witnesses said Suu Kyi walked out with two other women and cried as she watched the monks and prayed with them, but did not speak.

The leaders of the demonstrations have vowed to continue until the collapse of the military government.

They want the Burmese people to pray in their doorways for 15 minutes at 8pm on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

The protests began last month when the government doubled fuel prices, but they have taken on new momentum this week since the religious order became more widely involved.

On Friday, the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks branded Burma's military rulers "the enemy of the people".

The organisation pledged to continue their peaceful demonstrations until they had "wiped the military dictatorship from the land".

The movement has turned into the largest public show of opposition to the Burmese authorities since the uprising of 1988.