US to Engage Burmese Junta

The US will directly engage with Burma's military leadership in addition to its current sanctions, Hillary Clinton said yesterday. The secretary of State acknowledged that sanctions alone had failed to change "the lack of democracy in Burma and the authorities’ abysmal record on human rights," and it was time for a strategy change.

"Engagement versus sanctions is a false choice in our opinion," Clinton said after talks at the UN General Assembly. "So, going forward we will be employing both of those tools, pursuing our same goals." A spokesman for imprisoned opposition leader's Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy said the party agreed with the decision to engage with Burmese authorities as long as pressure was kept on the junta, the Wall Street Journal reports.
(More Burma stories.)