US delegation meets Suu Kyi as Washington re-engages Myanmar

Yangon: A US State Department official met Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday in a visit that marked the highest-ranking talks between an American and Myanmar's detained opposition leader in 14 years.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat for East Asia, greeted Suu Kyi with a handshake after she was driven to his lakeside hotel in Yangon where they met privately for two hours, said US Embassy spokesman Richard Mei.

Campbell and his deputy, Scot Marciel, are the highest-level Americans to visit Myanmar since 1995.

Dialogue

Their two-day trip, which included talks with senior junta officials, stems from a new US policy that reverses the Bush administration's isolation of Myanmar in favour of dialogue with a country that has been ruled by the military since 1962.

The topic of talks with Suu Kyi was not immediately known, but the meeting offered the Nobel Peace Prize laureate her first trip in years to outside the confines of her dilapidated home and a nearby government guesthouse, where she has met UN and junta officials in the past.

The 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest and for shorter periods at Myanmar's notorious Insein Prison.

Suu Kyi, dressed in a pink traditional Burmese jacket, was upbeat as she emerged from the hotel and joked with photographers who asked her to smile.

"Do I look pretty when I smile?" Suu Kyi asked as she smiled for the cameras.

"Hello to you all," she said, before getting into a car that whisked her back to her tightly guarded home.

The US visit is the second step in "the beginning of a dialogue with [Myanmar]," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington on Tuesday after the officials had met with senior junta officials in Naypyitaw.