Keep pressure on Myanmar, U.S. envoy says

BANGKOK, May 23 (Reuters) The international community must keep pressure on Myanmar's generals to implement real political reforms and begin talks with the opposition, a senior US diplomat said today.

''They have got to reach out and have a real dialogue with the opposition and start getting going. It's gone on for many years,'' U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters in Bangkok.

The United States was looking at ''a number of options for how we can take this further'', Hill said without giving details.

Washington requested on Monday that a top UN official brief the Security Council on his weekend meeting with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her first contact with an outsider in more than two years.

Ibrahim Gambari, the first senior UN official in two years to be allowed into the former Burma, which has been under military control since 1962, was expected to brief the council next week.

The United States and other Western nations want to put Myanmar formally on the council agenda to increase pressure on Yangon to speed up reforms and free Suu Kyi, detained since May 2003, and more than 1,000 other political prisoners.

But China, Russia, Japan have said the council was exceeding its mandate by involving itself in a human rights issue which did not pose a threat to international peace and security.

Hill, in Bangkok to meet his counterparts in the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations, one of the few international groupings willing to have Myanmar as a member, urged them to continue pressing for change there.

''We hope in particular that ASEAN's commitment and work towards democracy can help resolve our shared concerns about the problems in Burma,'' he told the diplomats.

Myanmar proposed a seven-step plan in 2003 to end 44 years of army rule, but the junta says it is only half way through step one, drafting a new constitution.

Yangon's foot-dragging has irked ASEAN, which forced Myanmar to forego its chairmanship of the grouping this year.

REUTERS CH VA VV1119