(UPDATE) US envoys in Myanmar for rare talks with junta
Agence France-Presse | 11/03/2009 3:14 PM
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YANGON - Two top US envoys arrived in Myanmar for talks with the ruling junta and democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, making the highest level visit to the country in 14 years as Washington looks to improve ties.
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 military regime.
The two men 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 the US delegation was unlikely to meet hardline junta chief Than Shwe, but will hold talks with Prime Minister Thein Sein in Naypyidaw.
Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi is under house arrest in the former capital Yangon after her detention was extended by another 18 months in August, prompting an international outcry.
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."
Myanmar officials said that Campbell's first meetings were with local organisations including the Union Solidarity and Development Association -- a pro-junta group accused by the NLD of a series of attacks on its members.
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.
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 doveish visiting US senator Jim Webb. The visit also secured the release of John Yettaw -- the American swimmer in the Suu Kyi case.
Premier Thein Sein told Asian leaders at a summit in Thailand last month that the junta sees a role for Suu Kyi in fostering reconciliation ahead of the promised elections and could ease restrictions on her.
The charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Yangon, Larry Dinger, said in an interview with the semi-official Myanmar Times this week that Washington wanted to make progress on "important issues" but would maintain sanctions "until concrete progress is made".
A foreign diplomat in Yangon said the visit was "important but at the same time without immediate consequence".
"It will be important to see how they are treated," the diplomat said. "It is necessary to be cautious. Everyone knows there is a risk of relations going cold again in two months."
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.
The 64-year-old Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention. But last month the generals granted her two rare meetings with a junta minister and allowed her to see Western diplomats.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.
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