US Senator Jim Webb met Myanmar top military leader Than Shwe in the country’s remote new capital of Naypyidaw yesterday, a state official said without disclosing details of the meeting.
It was unclear if Webb, who arrived from Laos on Friday, would visit opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who this week was sentenced to another 18 months’ house arrest for violating a security law.
Webb, chairman of a Senate subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific, is the first member of Congress to travel in an official capacity to Myanmar in more than a decade.
He has been described as the first senior US official ever to meet Than Shwe.
Webb’s visit comes in the wake of world anger over the conviction of Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate and a symbol of the movement for democracy in Myanmar, and some Myanmar dissident groups expressed unhappiness about the timing of his visit.
Webb could press for the release of John Yettaw, an American who swam uninvited to Suu Kyi’s lakeside home in Yangon in May.
He was sentenced to seven years’ hard labor in a parallel trial on Tuesday on three charges, including immigration offences and “swimming in a non-swimming area.”
It is unclear what Webb aims to achieve.
The US embassy in Myanmar has little knowledge of his plans and says all arrangements were made by his office in Washington.
The Obama administration, which had earlier indicated it was reviewing its policy toward Myanmar, has denounced Suu Kyi’s conviction.
The US has for years tried to use sanctions to persuade the generals to release political prisoners. Asian nations have argued it is better to engage the junta than to isolate a resource-rich country that lies geostrategically in Southeast Asia between India and China.
Webb supports a pro-engagement policy with the junta. Webb’s office said on Aug. 6 that he would travel to five countries in Southeast Asia on a two-week mission “to explore opportunities to advance US interests in Burma [Myanmar] and the region.”
Also yesterday, the US senator also met three representatives of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party in Naypyidaw before his meeting with Than Shwe. He is scheduled to fly to Yangon before ending his three-day visit today.
Webb is a former US Navy Secretary and a Vietnam War veteran who speaks Vietnamese.
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