Myanmar worries US envoy ahead of election run-up

Bangkok: A top US official said yesterday that Washington is "troubled" by the political environment created by Myanmar's hardline military regime ahead of the country's first elections in 20 years.

Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, is beginning his second visit to Myanmar and is due to meet with regime leaders as well as detained Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

"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 press conference during a stopover in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

Engineered

Suu Kyi and other democracy advocates have accused the regime of trying to engineer the upcoming elections to ensure the military retains its half-century-long grip on power.

Relations between Myanmar, also known as Burma, and the United States 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 favour of dialogue with the junta, which brooks no dissent and has detained Suu Kyi for 14 of the last 20 years.