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    October 25, 2011

US Burma Envoy Meets Aung San Suu Kyi

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