**Two senior US officials have begun a fact-finding visit to Burma.**Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and deputy Scot Marciel hope to hold talks with the ruling junta and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Mr Campbell, the top US diplomat for East Asia, is the highest ranking US official to visit Burma since 1995.
The visit is being seen as the latest move by President Barack Obama’s administration to find ways to engage with the military regime.
The US diplomats are unlikely to see the reclusive chief of the junta, Than Shwe, but will instead meet Prime Minister Thein Sein in the remote jungle capital of Naypyidaw on Tuesday, according to Burmese officials.
They will then travel to Rangoon on Wednesday to meet Nobel Peace laureate Ms Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended by 18 months this year, provoking international outrage.
Softly softly
This visit follows talks held in New York in September between US and Burmese officials, which were the highest level of contact in more than a decade.
The US has said it wants to find out if there is space for a new dialogue with the military, but has acknowledged they expect this to be a long and painful process.
The charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Rangoon, Larry Dinger, said in an interview with the semi-official Myanmar Times newspaper published this week that Washington wanted to make progress on “important issues” but would maintain sanctions “until concrete progress is made”.
Other Rangoon-based diplomats stressed the need for caution, and a moderation of expectations.
“We see this visit as the start of direct engagement between the US and Burma government,” Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD), told AFP news agency.
“But we do not expect the exact and big change from this meeting. This visit is just a first stage.”
Engaging
The junta extended Ms Suu Kyi’s house arrest after she was convicted in August over an incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside house.
But critics say the charges were trumped up to keep her out of the way during elections in 2010.
The month before, US Senator Jim Webb visited Burma and had an unprecedented meeting with junta leader Than Shwe which helped secure the release of John Yettaw, a maverick American whose escapade in swimming to Ms Suu Kyi’s Rangoon home led to her extended imprisonment.
Mr Webb has been a leading advocate of engaging the junta.
Burmaese Foreign Minister Thein Sein told Asian leaders at a summit in Thailand last month that the junta sees a role for Ms Suu Kyi in fostering reconciliation - but only if she displayed the “right attitude”.
Asian leaders, who have proven unwilling to confront their neighbour, grasped at the comments as signifying some hope of change although some analysts said there was no reason to be optimistic.
The last senior US diplomat to visit Burma was Madeleine Albright who went as the US ambassador to the United Nations in 1995 under the administration of President Bill Clinton.
The junta has kept Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the past two decades after her National League for Democracy swept elections in 1990 but was barred from taking power.