(Reuters) - Myanmar's November elections may eventually yield new political players open to change, even though the vote itself will not be credible, a senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday.
Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who oversees Washington's Asia policy, also said the Obama administration remained deeply disappointed in its effort to engage with the military leaders of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
"In almost every arena we have been disappointed in what we've seen to date," Campbell told an audience at a Washington thinktank.
He said Myanmar's November 7 elections -- which rights groups deride as a sham designed to entrench military power in the isolated Southeast Asian state -- would lack basic hallmarks of legitimacy such as independent election monitors.
"We regard this path as lacking the necessary credibility," Campbell said.
"It is also the case that the period after the election might create new players, new power relationships, new structures inside the country, so we think we need to stand by and see how that plays out."
Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called on members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party -- which swept Myanmar's last election in 1990 but was never allowed to take power -- not to vote in November.
The NLD was effectively dissolved in May after refusing to register for the elections, which critics say will create a facade of democracy while leaving the military and its proxies in control of parliament and the ministries.
Campbell said Washington was in touch with Myanmar's neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) about how best "to work toward a comprehensive dialogue with the regime and its follow-on successors."
"We think it is going to require a combination of some pressure and also some rewards if progress is made. And we're prepared to act in both cases given developments on the ground," he said.
President Barack Obama is due to meet with ASEAN leaders in New York on September 24 on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting. Myanmar, itself an ASEAN member, is expected to send its foreign minister, U.S. officials say.
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