US envoys hold talks with Myanmar junta
Two top US envoys began talks with Myanmar's ruling generals yesterday and were set to meet democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as they made the highest level visit to the military-ruled nation in 14 years.
The trip by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel is the latest move by President Barack Obama's administration to engage Myanmar's reclusive junta.
The American officials touched down in the remote administrative capital Naypyidaw on a US Air Force plane from Bangkok in neighbouring Thailand, US embassy spokesman Richard Mei said.
"They are due to meet with senior government officials today. Tomorrow they will be in Yangon and meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders," Mei told AFP.
Myanmar officials said Campbell met Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsann and local organisations including the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Association on Tuesday.
The US delegation would hold talks with Prime Minister Thein Sein on Wednesday morning but was unlikely to meet junta chief Senior General Than Shwe during the two-day trip, they said.
Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi had her house arrest extended by another 18 months in August, prompting an international outcry. She has spent most of the last two decades in detention.
Campbell is the highest ranking US official to travel to Myanmar -- formerly known as Burma -- since Madeleine Albright went as US ambassador to the United Nations in 1995 under the administration of President Bill Clinton.
"We see this visit as the start of direct engagement between the US and Myanmar government," Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy Party (NLD), told AFP.
The spokesman said he was not expecting a "big change" from the talks, adding: "This visit is just a first stage."
The Obama administration recently shifted US policy because its longstanding approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit, but Washington has said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.
Suu Kyi will be discussed when Obama meets Southeast Asian leaders in Singapore later this month, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Tuesday, adding that Thein Sein was expected to attend.
Lee said the inaugural US-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit on November 15 was a "significant step forward" in relations between Washington and Asean.
The Southeast Asian bloc favours engagement but has been accused of going soft on Myanmar's generals.
The junta extended Suu Kyi's house arrest after she was convicted in August over an incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside house, but critics say the charges were trumped up to keep her out of elections in 2010.
The visit by Campbell and Marciel is a follow-up to discussions in New York in September between US and Myanmar officials, the highest-level US contact with the regime in nearly a decade.
In August, junta chief Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with dovish visiting US senator Jim Webb. The visit also secured the release of John Yettaw -- the American swimmer in the Suu Kyi case.
Thein Sein told Asian leaders at a summit in Thailand last month that the junta sees a role for the 64-year-old Suu Kyi in fostering reconciliation ahead of the promised elections and could ease restrictions on her.
A Western diplomat in Yangon said Campbell's visit was "important but at the same time without immediate consequence".
The NLD won Myanmar's last elections, in 1990, by a landslide, which the junta refused to acknowledge. The US toughened sanctions on Myanmar after the regime cracked down on protests led by Buddhist monks in 2007.
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