Top US diplomat to pursue engagement policy during visit to Myanmar

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Top US diplomat to visit military-run Myanmar

YANGON, Myanmar — A top U.S. official begins his second visit to Myanmar on Sunday to pursue Washington’s new policy of engagement ahead of controversial elections being prepared by the country’s military regime.

The trip by Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, comes days after the formal disbanding of the main opposition party led by detained Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Campbell is expected to meet Suu Kyi, who has accused the ruling junta of trying to engineer the upcoming elections to ensure it retains its half-century-long grip on power.

Relations between Myanmar, also known as Burma, and the U.S. have been strained since its military crushed pro-democracy protests in 1988, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of demonstrators. Since then, Washington has been Myanmar’s strongest critic, applying political and economic sanctions against the junta for its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

Last year, though, President Barack Obama reversed the Bush administration’s isolation of Myanmar in favor of dialogue with the military junta, which brooks no dissent and detained Suu Kyi for 14 of the last 20 years.

Washington has said it will still maintain political and economic sanctions toward the junta until talks with Myanmar’s generals result in change.

Campbell, on his second visit in six months, will fly to Myanmar’s administrative capital of Naypyitaw on Sunday to talk with senior Myanmar officials, according to the diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Campbell had earlier been expected to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein, but according to his latest available schedule, will instead meet Foreign Minister Nyan Win, Information Minister Kyaw San and Science and Technology Minister U Thaung — Myanmar’s former envoy in Washington — who is the point person for U.S.-Myanmar engagement, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to talk to the media.

He will also meet the chairman of the 17-member Election Commission.

“I welcome the visit of Mr. Kurt Campbell but I don’t really understand what he expected to achieve from the visit,” said Nyan Win, who is Suu Kyi’s lawyer and a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which recently disbanded rather than take part in an election it says will be a sham.

The party ceased its political activities on Friday after declining to register under the country’s new election law. The League won Myanmar’s last election in 1990 but the army never allowed it to take power.

A faction within the League that disagreed with the boycott, however, said Friday it would form a separate party called the National Democratic Force and participate in the elections.

A number of senior regime officials have recently shed their uniforms, with apparent intent to run for elections under a thinly disguised pro-military political party.