October 22, 2009
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar confirmed Thursday that it will host a rare "fact-finding" mission from the United States as Washington seeks to engage its military leaders.
A Myanmar official said the trip would take place next week, but gave no further details as the visit was still in planning stages.
Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, announced earlier in Washington that a team would visit Myanmar "in the next few weeks" for a fact-finding mission to follow on from his talks last month in New York.
Those marked the highest-level US contact with Myanmar in nearly a decade.
"We expect engagement with Burma to be a long, slow, painful and step-by-step process," Campbell testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, using Myanmar's previous name.
Campbell, who has sought to reassure democracy activists concerned about a softening stance towards the authoritarian regime, said the dialogue would "supplement rather than replace the sanction regimes" on Myanmar.
He did not specify who would take part in the trip but said the US delegation hoped to meet detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi as well as representatives of ethnic groups that have battled the military regime.
Aung San Suu Kyi's political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), Thursday welcomed the planned visit. Party spokesman Nyan Win said it was a "good thing."
"They will also meet the NLD when they come," Nyan Win told AFP. "We welcome their visit. We are also hoping that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be allowed to meet Mr Campbell," he said.
The 64-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest.
Her party, the NLD, won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the junta did not allow it to take office.
The junta has promised to hold elections in 2010 in line with its seven-step "road map to democracy".
