US changes tack on Myanmar

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the Obama administration has decided to engage in direct high-level talks with Myanmar’s junta as part of international efforts to promote democracy in the military-run state.

Clinton made the announcement at the United Nations after meeting with her counterparts from a number of countries trying to convince the authoritarian regime to reform, allow dissent and release thousands of political prisoners, including Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

She said that U.S. sanctions against members of Myanmar’s leadership would remain in place but that those measures would now be accompanied by outreach. For months, Clinton had lamented that the sanctions alone were having little impact.

“We believe that sanctions remain important as part of our policy, but by themselves they have not produced the results that had been hoped for on behalf of the people of Burma,” Clinton told reporters, using the country’s traditional name.

“Engagement versus sanctions is a false choice in our opinion,” she said. “So, going forward we will be employing both of those tools, pursuing our same goals. To help achieve democratic reform, we will be engaging directly with Burmese authorities.”

The move is the latest in a series of reversals in Bush administration foreign policy by Obama’s national security team. The new administration is also reaching out to Iran and has scrapped major elements of Bush’s plan to construct a missile shield in eastern Europe.

The decision to engage Myanmar stemmed from a review of U.S. policy toward the country initiated after President Barack Obama took office. The Bush administration had shunned Myanmar in protest of multiple crackdowns on the opposition.

U.S. officials said Congress would be briefed on specifics of the new policy on Thursday.

A senior State Department official familiar with the review said the administration planned to name an envoy to deal with an “interlocutor” who Myanmar is expected to name soon to handle the dialogue with Washington.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because U.S. lawmakers have not yet been briefed on the plans, said discussions with Myanmar would now take place at a significantly higher level.

The official added that the administration did not expect “dramatic, immediate results” from engagement but hoped that over time the dialogue would help to pursuade the regime on reform, particularly in ensuring that elections set for 2010 are free and fair.

Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962, currently holds almost 2,200 political prisoners, according to estimates by human rights groups. None of them, however, are as well known as pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi.

Her National League for Democracy party handily won the country’s last elections in 1990 but the military never honored the results.

She has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years, and a global groundswell of international pressure to release the 64-year-old opposition leader has kept the impoverished military-ruled country under sanctions in recent years.

Last month, Suu Kyi was sentenced to another 18-month stint under house arrest for allowing an American intruder to stay at her home, ensuring she cannot participate in next year’s election.

That intruder, John Yettaw, was freed during a rare visit to Myanmar by a top U.S. lawmaker, Sen. James Webb, a Virginia Democrat, who returned from the country advocating engagement with the military regime.

Webb was instrumental in getting the State Department to waive travel restrictions included in the sanctions and allow Myanmar’s foreign minister to visit Washington ahead of his participation in this week’s U.N. General Assembly session.

The gathering that Clinton attended Friday’s on the sidelines of the General Assembly was the second of U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon’s so-called “Group of Friends on Myanmar” at the foreign minister level.

Afterward, Ban issued a statement calling 2010 “a critical year for Myanmar,” in which the upcoming election will be seen as credible only if it iincludes the political opposition.

Before Clinton spoke, Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo told reporters that re-engaging “will enable the U.S. and Europe to have more influence in the political evolution of the country.”