Indonesia takes on the chairmanship of ASEAN this year and with it the responsibility of trying to resolve the region's perennial problem of the suppression of democracy in fellow member Myanmar.

"This is a matter of approach. We have the experience, here in Indonesia, the situation was the same," the President told Reuters in an interview in the State Palace.

"This experience can be addressed, how Indonesia began its democracy."

Indonesia, now the world's third-largest democracy, was ruled by military leader Suharto for more than three decades before he stepped down amid mass protests and an economic crisis in 1998.

The military took over in Myanmar in 1962, isolating the country and suppressing dissent for decades until a tentative opening up began in 2011.

But its experiment with democracy, which included elections swept by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, came to end two years ago when the military ousted Suu Kyi's government, re-imposed strict military rule and crushed protests.

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