YANGON — A top US envoy voiced concern Sunday about Myanmar's preparations for its first elections in two decades, ahead of talks with the ruling junta and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
President Barack Obama's administration last year launched a policy of engaging Myanmar's rulers in a bid to promote democracy and improve human rights, but has since sharply criticised their approach to rare polls.
"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 during a stopover in Bangkok.
Campbell arrived in Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw Sunday to hold discussions with officials including Information Minister Kyaw Hsan, a government official in the military-ruled country told AFP, asking not to be named.
Obama's top diplomat for East Asia is due to travel to the main city Yangon afterwards for a meeting on Monday with Suu Kyi, who has been in detention for 14 of the past 20 years.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the junta never allowed it to take office.
The poll result was nullified by a widely criticised new election law introduced ahead of elections due later this year.
Campbell met the 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate in Yangon last November when he became the highest-ranking US official to visit Myanmar in 14 years.
During the latest visit, he is due to hold talks with former members of the NLD, which was dissolved last week under the controversial election law.
"The NLD will discuss with Mr Campbell our stand to solve national reconciliation problems. We hope a good result will come from our meeting with him," the NLD's long-time spokesman Nyan Win told AFP.
A faction within the NLD said Friday that it would form a new political party but had not decided whether to run in the 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."
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 Myanmar, which has been ruled by the military since 1962.
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.
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 have 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.
Campbell, who is expected to return to Bangkok later Monday, was unlikely to meet Prime Minister Thein Sein, a Myanmar official said.
