UNITED STATES PRESIDENT BARACK Obama will meet leaders of Southeast Asian nations, including Burma (Myanmar), next month in a high-level affirmation of Washington?s new policy of engaging the military-ruled country despite its dismal human rights record.

The Nov. 15 meeting between Obama and leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will take place on the sidelines of the annual summit of leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) forum in Singapore, said Scot Marciel, the US Ambassador for Asean Affairs.

Burmese Prime Minister Thein Sein will attend the meeting, which marks the 32nd anniversary of Washington?s relations with Asean, senior Burmese diplomat Min Lwin told the Associated Press in Manila.

Marciel and Min Lwin were in the Philippines along with other senior Asean diplomats to finalize the agenda for Obama?s meeting with Asean leaders.

Policy of engagement

The junta chief, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, typically shuns official meetings outside Burma.

The talks are to be the highest-level contact between Burma and the US in at least two decades.

Officials have not said if Obama will meet privately with Thein Sein. The last US president to meet a Burmese head of state was Lyndon B. Johnson, who held talks with then Prime Minister Ne Win in September 1966 during a state visit to Washington, according to Richard Mei, the US Embassy spokesperson in Burma.

Under Obama, Washington has reversed the Bush administration?s policy of shunning Burma in favor of direct talks with the Southeast Asian country that has been ruled by the military since 1962.

Burma welcomes the shift in US policy, Min Lwin said, describing the change as ?positive.?

No harm in talking

?What we?re trying to do is to step up and increase our engagement with Asean,? Marciel said.

Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo has said Asean welcomes the Obama administration?s new policy of engagement with Burma, adding that Southeast Asian governments have continued talking with the junta while constantly prodding it to move toward democracy.

?All of us talk with Myanmar,? he said. ?There is no harm in talking.?

Asean has faced a barrage of criticism in past years over its failure to coax democratic reforms from the junta or to win freedom for detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and some 2,000 other political prisoners.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the past 20 years, mostly under house arrest.

Tough sanctions stay

Despite their new approach to Burma, US officials have said that tough sanctions against the junta will remain until talks with its generals result in long-demanded democratic reforms.

Seven Asean member states?Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam?belong to Apec, which includes the US and other western nations. The three Asean members not in Apec are Cambodia, Laos and Burma.