The United States has sent two senior diplomats to Myanmar to hold talks with the ruling junta and detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and his deputy Scot Marciel arrived in Myanmar on Tuesday on the highest level American visit to the country in 14 years.

US Embassy spokesman Richard Mei confirmed that the plane carrying the diplomats landed in the remote administrative capital of Naypyidaw.

They are scheduled to meet with senior government officials on Tuesday, before they set out for Yangon and meet with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders on Wednesday.

Myanmar officials said the US pair were unlikely to see the reclusive chief of the junta, Than Shwe, but will instead meet Prime Minister Thein Sein in the capital.

Myanmar's democracy icon Suu Kyi has been under house arrest in Yangon since the ruling Junta extended her detention by another 18 months in August despite international opposition.

A spokesman for her National League for Democracy Party (NLD) described the visit by Campbell, the highest ranking US official to travel to Myanmar since 1995, as the start of direct engagement between the US and Myanmar junta, but said her party "do not expect a big change from this meeting."

In August, the military government convicted Suu Kyi and extended her house arrest after a US man swam to her lakeside house. The move was viewed by critics as a plot to keep the opposition figure off the scene for elections in 2010.

Suu Kyi's NLD reached a landslide victory in Myanmar's last elections in 1990, but the junta refused to acknowledge the win and posed a campaign of oppression on the 64-year-old Noble laureate, who has spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention.

MRS/SC/DT