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US Burma Envoy Meets Aung San Suu Kyi


Derek Mitchell, Washington's special representative to Myanmar, talks during a press conference at Yangon International Airport in Yangon, Myanmar, (File September 14, 2011).
Derek Mitchell, Washington's special representative to Myanmar, talks during a press conference at Yangon International Airport in Yangon, Myanmar, (File September 14, 2011).

The new U.S. special envoy to Burma has met in Rangoon with pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as Washington presses the new, nominally-civilian Burmese government to continue releasing political prisoners.

Tuesday's meeting comes on the second day of a two-day visit by Derek Mitchell, who met Monday with government officials in Burma's administrative capital, Naypyitaw.

Sources in Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party told VOA that Mitchell and the Nobel laureate met for nearly two hours Tuesday. Details of the meeting were not disclosed.

Mitchell's visit is the second this month. It follows the new government's highly-touted prisoner amnesty earlier this month that failed to include most of the 2,000-plus political prisoners jailed by the country's former military junta.

Mitchell, speaking last week, praised the release of some 200 political prisoners. But he said the new government, which took office earlier this year, must deepen its commitment to political reforms if it wants Western governments to lift economic sanctions imposed on the Southeast Asian nation during the past decade.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP.

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