WASHINGTON – Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, renowned for her peaceful struggle against military rule, began a marathon tour of the U.S. on Monday, the latest milestone in her remarkable journey from political prisoner to globe-trotting stateswoman.

Her Sept. 25 stop in Fort Wayne will include a speaking engagement at Memorial Coliseum. Local Burmese activists have said Suu Kyi will draw at least 10,000 people to her speech.

The Nobel Peace laureate will be presented with Congress’ highest award during a 17-day visit that comes as the Obama administration considers easing remaining sanctions on the country. In the latest step toward political opening, Myanmar announced a new round of prisoner releases, hours before Suu Kyi touched down in Washington.

Suu Kyi meets today with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and is likely to visit the White House. She then goes to New York, the Midwest and California in a whirlwind of speaking engagements and award ceremonies, as if making up for lost time for the years of confinement that prevented her from traveling overseas since the late 1980s.

Since her release from house arrest in late 2010, Suu Kyi has transitioned from dissident to parliamentarian. Myanmar, also known as Burma, has shifted from five decades of repressive military rule, gaining international acceptance for a former pariah regime.

Now confident of her position inside Myanmar, Suu Kyi has in the past four months started to spread her wings. She has traveled to Thailand and five nations in Europe, where she was accorded honors usually reserved for heads of state.

Revered by Republicans and Democrats alike, Suu Kyi will get star treatment in the U.S. too, although her schedule is being carefully planned to avoid upstaging Myanmar President Thein Sein, who arrives in the U.S. the following week to attend the U.N. General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders in New York.

“The idea that she will be at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, to receive the highest award Congress can give, just a couple of years after she was under house arrest in her own country, is just remarkable,” said Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., one of the lawmakers who sponsored her 2008 award of the Congressional Gold Medal.

For years, some of Washington’s most powerful politicians have been among Suu Kyi’s strongest advocates in a rare show of bipartisan consensus.

Both when sanctions against the Myanmar junta were imposed, and over the past year when they have been suspended, Democrats and Republicans have found common cause.

The Obama administration is now considering easing a ban on imports from Myanmar into the U.S., the main plank remaining in the tough economic sanctions that Washington has chipped away at this year to reward the country’s progress toward democracy.

While Congress last month renewed the sanctions for another year, President Obama could waive its provisions.

Myanmar appeared to take a step in the right direction Monday when it announced it was freeing more than 500 prisoners, which activists expected to include dozens of political detainees.

Suu Kyi is under political pressure from Thein Sein’s government to press the U.S. to remove the restrictions – and it’s a step that she appears willing to consider, although many of her longtime supporters in exile oppose it, saying Myanmar should not be rewarded at a time when ethnic violence is escalating in some parts of the country.