UPDATED
YANGON, Nov 4 — A top US official held rare talks with Myanmar’s detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, today as part of Washington’s highest-level visit to the isolated army-ruled country in 14 years.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner met United States Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell for more than two hours at a hotel near Yangon’s Inya lake, close to her home where she has been detained for much of the past two decades.
Suu Kyi and Campbell posed for photographs but did not answer reporters’ questions.
Campbell, Washington’s top official for East and Southeast Asia, met earlier today with Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein.
Yesterday, Campbell held talks with top junta officials in the remote new capital Naypyidaw, but he did not meet junta supremo Than Shwe, the ageing general who has tightly controlled the former Burma for the past 17 years.
Diplomats and analysts have described the visit as an exploratory dialogue and say it is unlikely anything substantive will come from the two-day trip, which comes after a recent softening of stances by both sides. The State Department said yesterday the visit was a “fact-finding mission”.
The regime is keen to see Western sanctions lifted and has allowed Suu Kyi to raise the issue with diplomats in meetings that the junta normally forbids.
The United States announced in September it would pursue deeper engagement to try to spur democratic reforms in Myanmar and is pressing for free, fair and inclusive elections next year.
However, it has refused to lift its trade embargo on the resource-rich country and says the dialogue would supplement sanctions rather than replace them.
Campbell was due to meet representatives of ethnic groups and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which was the clear winner the last time polls were held in 1990.
The military, which has ruled since a 1962 coup, refused to recognise the NLD victory. The party has yet to say whether it will contest next year’s vote. — Reuters
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