NEW DELHI — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Myanmar on Wednesday for a historic three-day visit to this long-isolated nation focused on encouraging further political reforms, assessing recent progress and providing a road map on forging closer ties with the United States and Europe.
But the highest priority of a meeting with Myanmar’s foreign minister, according to a senior State Department official traveling with Clinton, will be to seek assurances that the Southeast Asian nation will halt purchases of missile technology from renegade North Korea.
The trip by Clinton, the first visit by a sitting secretary of state since 1955, signals that the U.S. is ready to engage with a leadership whose “flickers of progress,” in President Barack Obama’s words, are promising, even as it remains unclear whether they are deeply rooted or sustainable.
One possible stumbling block could be what the White House believes have been “surreptitious contacts” between Myanmar and North Korea in the past, the senior American official said.
“A continuation of these kinds of efforts will make it very difficult for the United States to take the steps to improve the relationship,” as Myanmar wants, the official said.
U.S. analysts have examined closely whether Myanmar and North Korea have been secretly collaborating on a nuclear-weapons program, but “we do not see signs of substantial effort at this time,” the senior official said.
Another key U.S. objective here, and in its other recent Southeast Asian initiatives, has been to check China’s growing economic, political and military clout in the region. Closer links between Myanmar and the U.S. also could reduce border issues between Myanmar and Thailand and India, affording greater security to two strong U.S. allies.
The challenge for Washington moving ahead, analysts said, will be to effectively employ the West’s available carrots and sticks — among them, economic sanctions, foreign aid and diplomatic recognition — in ways that keep Myanmar moving forward while not emboldening hardliners intent on reversing course.
In recent months, the country, which is also known as Burma, has taken steps that might seem relatively modest by Western standards — including elections, writing a new constitution, releasing pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and easing restrictions on the media — but that are significant in a nation with a long history of strong-arm rule.
In scheduled appointments with President Thein Sein, Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin and parliamentary leaders today, Clinton plans to meet with the government’s new face, the first tendrils of a hoped-for democratic transition. Absent will be any obvious representatives of the active military (Thein Sein is a former general), yet there remains no clear picture of who might be directing policy behind the scenes.
A highlight of Clinton’s trip will be her scheduled meeting with Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who spent 15 years in detention.
Suu Kyi, who gave the Clinton trip her blessing, recently announced plans to run for parliament after Myanmar’s president ruled that her previously banned political party could return to politics.
