A top US envoy voiced concern Sunday about election preparations in Burma ahead of his visit there for talks with the ruling junta and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
File photo shows a Burma activist holding a portrait of Burma democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi during a protest in Bangkok. A top US envoy voiced concern Sunday about election preparations in Burma ahead of his visit there for talks with the ruling junta and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"We're troubled by much of what we've seen and we have very real concerns about the elections laws and the environment that's been created," said Kurt Campbell, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
"Our team would like the opportunity to engage directly and see what the plans are in terms of the overall approach of the elections," he told a news conference in Bangkok.
Campbell was due to fly to Burma's capital Naypyidaw on Sunday for talks with government officials, followed by a meeting on Monday with Suu Kyi, who has been has been in detention for 14 of the past 20 years.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) was forcibly dissolved Thursday under widely criticised laws governing elections that are scheduled for later this year, the first in two decades.
Campbell met the 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate in Rangoon last November when he became the highest-ranking US official to visit Burma in 14 years.
President Barack Obama's administration last year launched a policy of engaging Burma's rulers in a bid to promote democracy and improve human rights, but has since sharply criticised the junta's approach to elections.
"I think it's critical to have a dialogue with the government as well as key figures outside the government," Campbell said.
"We will be meeting with elements of the NLD. We will meet with other elements as well," he said.
A faction within the NLD said Friday that it would form a new political party but has not decided whether to run in the elections.
Former top NLD members have said they would urge the US envoy to push for a dialogue between the junta and the democracy campaigners.
"We will discuss with him the matter of the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners" as well as the need for the regime to make its election plans more credible, said Tin Oo, who was the NLD's vice-chairman.
"Daw" is a term of respect in Burma.
The NLD refused to meet a May 6 deadline to re-register as a party -- a move that would have forced it to expel its own leader -- and boycotted the vote, which critics say is a sham designed to legitimise the junta's grip on power.
Under election legislation unveiled in March, anyone serving a prison term is banned from being a member of a political party and parties that fail to obey the rule will be abolished.
Burma has been ruled by the military since 1962. The NLD won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the junta never allowed it to take office and the latest elections laws nullified the results of that vote.
The NLD was founded in 1988 after a popular uprising against the military junta that left thousands of people dead.
Years of persecution by the junta has left the NLD in poor shape, and the purist stance taken by the leadership, many aged in their 80s and 90s, has been questioned by a new generation favouring a more pragmatic approach.
The US State Department had said Campbell would only visit if he were allowed to see Suu Kyi and other opposition members, and a Burma official said Saturday he would be allowed to meet the democracy icon on Monday.
Campbell, who is expected to return to Bangkok later Monday, was unlikely to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein but would instead hold talks with officials including Information Minister Kyaw Hsan, the official said.
From : Bangkok Post
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