Clinton hopeful for progress in Myanmar

NAYPYIDAW, Myanmar -- Looking to cement a foreign policy success and prod reform in one of the world's most isolated and authoritarian nations, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said yesterday she was hopeful that "flickers of progress" would burst into flames of reform in Myanmar.

Clinton's diplomatically risky trip to a nation that receives few outsiders and heavily restricts what its people can see and read is meant to test whether the new civilian leaders are truly ready to throw off 50 years of military dictatorship.

U.S. officials said she would press the leadership on severing military issues and suspected nuclear ties with North Korea.

"I am obviously looking to determine for myself and on behalf of our government what is the intention of the current government with respect to continuing reforms, both political and economic," Clinton told reporters before her arrival here. It is the first trip in more than half a century by a U.S. secretary of state to the country also known as Burma.

She is to meet senior Myanmar officials including President Thein Sein in Naypyidaw, the capital, today before heading to the commercial capital of Yangon. There she will see opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who is returning to the political scene after decades of detention and harassment.

Successive military regimes canceled 1990 elections that Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won. She has said she plans to run in upcoming elections.

"We and many other nations are quite hopeful that these flickers of progress . . . will be ignited into a movement for change that will benefit the people of the country," Clinton said. President Barack Obama used the same description -- "flickers of progress" -- when he announced he was sending Clinton to Myanmar.

Clinton was greeted at Naypyidaw's small airfield by a deputy foreign minister, other officials and a large contingent of international press who were granted rare visas to cover her visit. But her presence appeared to take second stage to the expected arrival today of the prime minister of Belarus and his wife, for whom two large welcoming signs were erected at the airport and the road into the city. Belarus is often criticized for its poor human rights record and is subject to U.S. sanctions similar to those Myanmar is under.

No signs welcoming Clinton were visible as her motorcade bounced from the airport to the city on a bumpy road largely devoid of vehicles, with traffic police stopping small and scattered groups of cars, trucks and motorbikes at intersections.