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YANGON: Two senior US envoys arrived in Myanmar Tuesday for talks with the ruling military government and detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, on the highest level American visit to the country 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 the military government.
"The plane just landed" in the remote administrative capital Naypyidaw, US Embassy spokesman Richard Mei told AFP.
"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 said.
Myanmar officials said the US pair were unlikely to see the reclusive chief of the military government, Than Shwe, but will instead meet Prime Minister Thein Sein in the capital.
Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi is being held under house arrest in the commercial hub 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 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.
"But we do not expect the exact and big change from this meeting. This visit is just a first stage."
He said the NLD had been told that the US envoys would meet the party's central executive committee at their headquarters on Wednesday and would meet Suu Kyi the same day.
The Obama administration recently shifted US policy because its longstanding approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit, but has said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.
The military government 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 off the scene for 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, which marked the highest-level American contact with the nation in nearly a decade.
In August, Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with visiting US senator Jim Webb, a leading advocate of engaging the military government. 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 military government sees a role for Suu Kyi in fostering reconciliation ahead of the promised elections but it was not clear what form this would take.
The charge d'affaires at the US embassy in Yangon, Larry Dinger, said in an interview with the semi-official Myanmar Times newspaper published 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 is necessary to be cautious. Everyone knows there is a risk of relations going cold again in two months," the diplomat said.
The NLD won Myanmar's last elections in 1990 by a landslide, which the military government refused to acknowledge, and has since faced a campaign of oppression.
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 minister and allowed her to see Western diplomats.
The talks followed a letter she wrote to Than Shwe in late September, offering her co-operation in getting Western sanctions lifted after years of favoring harsh measures against the ruling generals.
- AFP/yb
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