US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday her trip to Burma is to find out whether the military-backed leadership there is committed to both political and economic reform.
"One of the reasons that I'm going is to test what the true intentions are and whether there is a commitment to both economic and political reform," Clinton said in an interview with CNN television.
Her historic visit to Burma, announced by President Barack Obama, follows several visits made by US special envoy Derek Mitchell as well as conversations Clinton and Obama have had with Burma's democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
"And there certainly does seem to be an opening," Clinton said during the interview with the US network on the Indonesian island of Bali, the venue for a regional summit she and Obama are to attend.
"Now how real it is, how far it goes, we're going to have to make sure we have a better understanding than we do right now. But at least there has been some forward movement," Clinton said.
"And in this part of the world, we have examples of countries that did finally get on a democratic path after authoritarian regimes, military dictatorships, all of the problems that have been around for a long time," she said.
"So we're hoping, most certainly for the people of Burma, that this is real. But if it is, the United States will support and encourage it," the chief US diplomat said, referring to Myanmar by its former name.
In another interview with Fox News, Clinton said there were specific steps she expected from Myanmar.
"We'd like to see more political prisoners released. We would like to see a real political process and real elections. We'd like to see an end to the conflicts, particularly the terrible conflicts with ethnic minorities," she said.
"But we think there's an opportunity and we want to test it."
Obama said Friday he would send Clinton to Burma on December 1-2, the first visit there by a US secretary of state for 50 years, to encourage democratic reform.
The announcement came as Suu Kyi's party said it would return to Myanmar's official political arena after years of marginalisation under military rule.
