US envoy in landmark talks with Suu Kyi

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US envoy in landmark talks with Suu Kyi

Agence France-Presse | 11/04/2009 8:16 PM

YANGON - A top US official held talks with Aung San Suu Kyi Wednesday after Myanmar's ruling junta gave the democracy icon a rare break from house arrest during Washington's highest-level visit here for 14 years.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell also met Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein as part of efforts by the Obama administration to re-engage with the hardline military regime.

Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi met Campbell for two hours at a luxury hotel in Yangon -- the first time she had appeared in front of the media other than at her home or in prison since her current period of detention began in 2003.

Dressed in a pink and maroon traditional outfit, the 64-year-old smiled but did not answer questions as she headed into the talks with the US diplomat and his deputy, Scot Marciel.

"Am I beautiful when I smile?" Suu Kyi joked with the media after the talks, adding: "Hello to all of you."




Suu Kyi has spent most of the last two decades in detention and the junta gave her an extra 18 months of house arrest in August, effectively ruling her out of elections due in 2010 that critics say are a sham.

The opposition leader was sentenced after being found guilty of harbouring an American man who swam to her lakeside house earlier in the year. Journalists saw her in prison at the trial but were not allowed to take pictures.

Campbell and Marciel held talks earlier on Wednesday with Premier Thein Sein in the remote administrative capital Naypyidaw, Myanmar officials said on condition of anonymity, without giving details.

Myanmar officials said the US delegation was not expected to meet reclusive junta leader Than Shwe. State media said that when the US envoys arrived he was in southern Myanmar inspecting aid efforts after last year's Cyclone Nargis.

The US duo also met with senior members of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won Myanmar's last elections in 1990 but was prevented from taking power by the army. They were due to leave Wednesday night.

"The meeting was positive," NLD spokesman Khin Maung Swe, who attended the talks at party headquarters in Yangon, told AFP.

"We discussed the transition to democracy and focused on the dialogue between Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior General Than Shwe. From their side they didn't say much, they just listened," he said.

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 during Bill Clinton's presidency.

The two-day trip 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.

President Barack Obama's administration in September announced a dramatic change in US policy because isolating Myanmar had failed, but said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.

US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly overnight described the visit as a "fact-finding mission" and said it was the "the second step in the beginning of a dialogue with Burma."

Asked what Campbell discussed on Tuesday in talks with the information minister and local organisations, Kelly said: "They laid out the way we see this relationship going forward, how we should structure this dialogue, but they were mainly in a listening mode."

September's talks had called for free and fair elections and the release of Suu Kyi, but also dealt with US concerns about Myanmar's possible military links with nuclear-armed North Korea.

The first major sign of a thaw came in August when Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with visiting US senator Jim Webb, which yielded the release of John Yettaw, the American detained for swimming to Suu Kyi's house.

Suu Kyi then said that she would be ready to help the junta get sanctions lifted and she was allowed to meet foreign diplomats in October.
as of 11/04/2009 8:16 PM http://www.abs- cbnnews.com/ world/11/ 04/09/us- envoy-landmark- talks-suu- kyi
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