US diplomat meets detained Aung San Suu Kyi, voices concerns on Myanmar elections

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US envoy meets with Myanmar’s Suu Kyi

YANGON, Myanmar — A top U.S. official met Myanmar’s detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday after expressing concerns about the legitimacy of the military-run country’s upcoming elections.

Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, held nearly two hours of closed-door talks with Suu Kyi at a government guesthouse. Details of their conversation were not immediately known.

Campbell’s visit, his second in six months, came just days after the dissolution of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, or NLD, which won the country’s last election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.

Before meeting with Suu Kyi, Campbell spoke with NLD senior leaders who urged Washington to convey its concerns by getting tougher with the junta.

“We call on the United States and the international community to take tougher and more effective action against the military government, such as political and economic pressure,” said Win Tin, a senior NLD member and a longtime political prisoner.

“We also told Mr. Campbell not to recognize the results of the upcoming election, which will be held without the two important elements — credibility and inclusivity — that the international community has demanded,” he said.

The NLD was dissolved Friday after effectively boycotting the election by declining to register for it, as required by a new election law. The NLD and other democracy advocates have called the election a sham designed to cement military rule.

Suu Kyi was driven from her home in a three-car police motorcade to the nearby government guesthouse for the talks with Campbell. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been detained, mostly under house arrest, for 14 of the past 20 years.

Campbell arrived Sunday and met with senior junta officials in the remote administrative capital of Naypyitaw before flying Monday to Yangon, the biggest city. Among the officials he met were 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 the U.S.-Myanmar engagement.

“We are troubled by much of what we have seen. We have very real concerns about the election and the environment that has been created,” Campbell told a news conference Sunday during a stopover in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

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.

Campbell, however, said he would continue a dialogue with all sides in Myanmar as part of a new Washington policy of engagement rather than isolation of the ruling generals.

Last year President Barack Obama reversed the Bush administration’s isolation of Myanmar in favor of dialogue with the junta.

Campbell cited the recently issued election laws, lack of talks between the military and pro-democracy advocates, political prisoners, status of ethnic minorities and nonproliferation as issues he would bring up during discussions.

The United States has also raised concerns that Myanmar may be trying to acquire nuclear technology, possibly with the help of North Korea.

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