THE OBAMA administration’s new policy of engagement with Burma faces its first test as two senior diplomats begin its highest-level visit to the military dictatorship for more than a decade.
Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state for east Asian affairs, and his deputy, Scot Marciel, arrived in Burma yesterday for meetings with senior junta officials. They will also meet imprisoned pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentenced to a further 18 months’ house arrest in August after being found guilty of harbouring an American intruder at her home in May.
World leaders denounced the sentence, which will prevent her taking part in elections planned for next year.
Mr Campbell’s two-day trip marks a significant shift from the policy of isolation supported by previous administrations.
The US, which imposed sanctions in the late 1990s, tightened the measures two years ago after the Burmese military brutally suppressed peaceful democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.
The last senior US diplomat to visit the country was Madeleine Albright in 1995, in her role as Bill Clinton’s ambassador to the UN. Five years earlier, the regime drew international condemnation after it ignored an election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). The Nobel peace laureate has been detained for 14 of the last 20 years.
Washington has said it will maintain political and economic pressure while it waits for Burma to improve human rights, implement democratic reforms and cut military ties with North Korea.
Mr Campbell said last month that if the junta failed to respond, “we will reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime and its supporters”.
He was scheduled to meet the Burmese prime minister, Thein Sein, in the administrative capital, Naypyitaw, yesterday, but not the junta's hardline senior general, Than Shwe, who has led the country for 17 years. Mr Campbell will meet Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD members in Rangoon today, reports said. – ( Guardianservice)