U.S. envoys in Myanmar unlikely to meet junta chief

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel are planning the visit in the latest move by President Barack Obama's administration to engage the regime.

They will go to the remote administrative capital of Naypyidaw on Tuesday and meet Prime Minister Thein Sein, a Myanmar official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

This is the highest level government member the pair will meet, the official said, suggesting that they will not be granted talks with regime leader Than Shwe.

They will travel to Yangon Wednesday to meet Suu Kyi and members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) before departing the country, the official added.

The visit 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 regime in nearly a decade.

The Obama administration shifted its policy because its longstanding approach of isolating Myanmar had failed to bear fruit, but said it would not ease sanctions without progress on democracy and human rights.

In August, Than Shwe held an unprecedented meeting with a visiting US senator, Jim Webb, a leading advocate of engaging the junta.

But if, as the official's comments suggest, Than Shwe does not want to meet the US delegation this week, he may leave the capital during their visit, said activist and scholar Win Min in northern Thailand.

“He doesn't want to make significant concessions even though he wants to get the US to lift sanctions,” Win Min said, noting that the leader avoided a request to meet UN special envoy Razali Ismail in 2003 by visiting the west coast and leaving the then premier to see the envoy.

A State Department official, Stephen Blake, quietly visited Myanmar in March to hold talks with both junta members and the opposition. It was the first trip by a US envoy to the country in more than seven years.

Campbell told a congressional panel last month that the dialogue would “supplement rather than replace” the sanctions regime.

The chief US diplomat for Asia acknowledged that the talks, which aim to press for democratic reform in Myanmar ahead of elections promised by the ruling generals for 2010, would be neither simple nor straightforward.

Thein Sein told Asian leaders at a summit in Thailand last weekend that the junta sees a role for Suu Kyi in fostering reconciliation ahead of the elections, but it was not clear what form this would take.

The 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention, and in August was placed under a further 18 months' house arrest, effectively barring her from taking part in the polls.

But last month the generals granted her two rare meetings with Labor Minister Aung Kyi, the official liaison between her and the junta, and a meeting with 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 generals.

Suu Kyi's NLD party won the last elections in 1990 by a landslide, which the junta refused to acknowledge.

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