Posted by Thawngsian Tung (CNC-Japan)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks on March 19, 2009 in Washington, DC. Clinton said... YANGON (AFP) - A senior US official held talks with Myanmar's junta and the party of opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi during a rare visit to the military-ruled nation, officials and state media said Wednesday.
The trip by State Department official Stephen Blake came as US President Barack Obama's administration continues to review the tough stance taken on Myanmar by his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Blake, the department's director of Mainland Southeast Asian Affairs, met Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win in the administrative capital Naypyidaw on Tuesday, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said.
The government-run paper said they held "cordial discussions on issues of mutual interests and promotion of bilateral relations between the Union of Myanmar and the United States."
Blake later went to the main city of Yangon to meet leaders of the opposition National League for Democracy, whose leader, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained for most of the past 19 years.
An NLD spokesman, also called Nyan Win, said the party's central committee met Blake at its headquarters for an hour in the afternoon but the US official would not reveal Washington's likely future stance towards Myanmar or Aung San Suu Kyi.
"He (Blake) asked us about the NLD's opinions on the recent political situation and the coming 2010 election. We also asked him about the policy of the US State Department," spokesman Nyan Win told AFP.
"We told him that we haven't decided yet whether or not to participate in the elections but we told him the important thing for us is to review the state constitution and to begin dialogue (with authorities)."
The spokesman said he believed Blake was the most senior official from the State Department to see the NLD in recent years.
"He did not bring any message from the authorities. He did not mention about Daw Aung San Suu Kyi," Nyan Win added.
An official from the US embassy in Yangon said that Blake's visit was "routine."
"What he did in this trip is not different from what he has done in the other countries and not different from the previous directors," the official said on condition of anonymity.
But official Myanmar sources insisted that Blake's visit to Naypyidaw was the first to the city to promote bilateral relations between the two countries.
They also said that a reception held by the US embassy for officials in Naypyidaw to introduce the visiting director was the first held by any foreign mission in the capital.
"Myanmar and the US have been friendly countries since the beginning. They were also the first country to recognise our independence from the British in 1948," a senior Myanmar official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"They misunderstood our country's situation after the 1988 uprising. We will not understand each other without talking. It was the first time a director of the US visited here for talks -- the US did what they should do," he said.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been ruled by the army since 1962 and a student-led uprising in 1988 ended in a brutal military crackdown which left an estimated 3,000 people dead.
The junta ignored a landslide election victory by Aung San Suu Kyi's party in 1990 and critics say general elections planned for 2010 are a sham aimed at entrenching the generals' power.
The regime has handed out heavy jail terms to dozens of pro-democracy activists in recent months, many of them involved in protests led by Buddhist monks that erupted in 2007.
But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last month that the Obama administration is reviewing its policy towards Myanmar to find ways to better influence the regime and help the country's people.
Bush's administration strengthened decade-old sanctions against Myanmar -- imposed under his predecessor Bill Clinton -- while his wife Laura was an outspoken critic of the military regime.