Two senior US diplomats have held talks with Myanmar's Prime Minister Thein Sein and the pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the first in 14 years.

The meetings were held after the ruling Myanmar's junta granted the Nobel laureate a rare break from detention.

US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell, and his deputy, Scot Marciel, arrived in Myanmar on Tuesday to hold the meetings as the Obama administration seeks a new era of engagement with the military regime.

Campbell greeted Suu Kyi with a handshake after she was driven to his lakeside hotel in Yangon where they met privately for two hours, said the US Embassy spokesman Richard Mei.

No details on either set of talks have been released.

The US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters in Washington Tuesday that the visit, which comes weeks after the Obama administration announced that it would engage with Burma's military junta, is considered as the second step in " beginning of a dialogue with Burma."

"They laid out the way we see this relationship going forward, how we should structure this dialogue," Kelly said. "But they were mainly in a listening mode."

Meanwhile, the US envoys are not meeting Burma's top leader, General Than Shwe, the country's military leader.

Burma's military junta says multi-party elections will take place in early 2010, the first poll in nearly two decades.

MVZ/SC/MB