U.S. plans fact-finding mission to Myanmar: official

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will soon send a fact-finding delegation to Myanmar as part of an exploratory dialogue with that country's military junta, the top U.S. diplomat for Asia said on Wednesday.

"We intend to go to Burma in the next few weeks for a fact-finding mission," Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. He gave no dates or details.

"During our trip, we will talk to the Burmese government, representatives of the ethnic nationalities and the democratic opposition including the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi and others," he testified in a hearing.

Campbell met Myanmar's minister of science, technology and labor, in New York last month in what was the highest-level U.S. contact with Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, in nine years.

Following a U.S. policy review on Myanmar, the Obama administration in September announced it would pursue deeper engagement with Myanmar's military rulers to try to spur democratic reform.

But Washington said it would not ease sanctions imposed on the generals who rule the country to try to force them to hold talks with ethnic minorities and with Nobel laureate and opposition party leader Suu Kyi.

Myanmar this month allowed Suu Kyi, 64, to meet with U.S. and other Western diplomats on several occasions outside her lakeside home, where she is held under house arrest.

Campbell rebuffed calls by some U.S. lawmakers and Myanmar experts for easing of tight curbs on trade and investment in Myanmar, telling the hearing the talks "will supplement rather than replace the sanctions regime."

"We will maintain our existing sanctions until we see concrete progress and continue to work with the international community to ensure that those sanctions are effectively coordinated," he said.

Critics of the U.S. sanctions policy say the cutting of all commercial ties had eroded U.S. influence and placed the resource-rich country under the influence of its huge neighbor China, one of the junta's closest supporters.