"We must all welcome the imminent release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest," said former South African president FW de Klerk, who won the Peace Prize in 1993 with Nelson Mandela for efforts to end apartheid in the country.

"We must remember she has been released from her house arrest before only to be detained again," he said. "Also we can be sure that we will continue to insist on the restoration of full democracy for the Burmese (Myanmar) people."

Suu Kyi, the democracy leader who has been detained for most of the past two decades, could be just hours away from freedom as her current term of house arrest is due to end on Saturday.

The detained 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner is still seen as the biggest threat to the junta after almost five decades of military dictatorship, and has been locked up for most of the past 20 years.

The 65-year-old dissident's most recent 18-month sentence is due to end on Saturday and the authorities have said her release is imminent, even though some fear the generals may find an excuse to extend it.

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and five other past Nobel Peace laureates gathered for the annual meeting, which this year is being held in Hiroshima, the city obliterated by a US atomic bomb attack in 1945.

"Let us express the hope that at next year's conference she will be part of it," said de Klerk of Suu Kyi.

Jody Williams, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 1997 along with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said she was "reluctant to applaud" in anticipation of Suu Kyi's possible release.

"She has made it very clear ... she will not accept any conditional release," Williams told AFP.

"I'm reluctant to applaud because she is not out. In the view of the Nobel Women's Initiative, she just should be free, period," said Williams, referring to a grouping of female Nobel Peace laureates including herself.

As well as calling for an end to nuclear weapons, the meeting has also drawn attention to the plight of those who could not attend, including this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who is imprisoned in China.

US President Barack Obama, who was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize partly for his commitment to nuclear disarmament, missed the meeting due to a scheduling conflict with the Group of 20 meeting in Seoul and an APEC meeting in Japan.

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who received the prize in 1990 for his role in ending the Cold War, cancelled for health reasons.

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