U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell on Wednesday held talks with pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in the country's largest city Yangon.

It is the first time for Campbell to meet face to face with Suu Kyi. U.S. Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs Scot Marciel was also present at the meeting, which was held at a Yangon hotel and lasted two hours.

After the meeting, Suu Kyi greeted reporters but was driven back to her lakeside villa without commenting on the content of the talks.

The U.S. diplomats met with Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein in the administrative capital Naypyitaw in the morning before flying south to the former capital Yangon to meet Suu Kyi and her party executives.

They are also slated to meet leaders of other political parties while in Yangon.

Campbell's trip is part of U.S. President Barack Obama's new policy of engagement that reverses the George W. Bush administration's stance of avoiding high-level contact with the repressive military government.

Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace laureate and leader of the National League for Democracy, was sentenced in August to another 18-month stint under house arrest for allowing a U.S. intruder to stay at her home.

The sentence ensured that she will be unable to participate in the election scheduled for next year, the first in Myanmar in two decades. Her NLD won a sweeping victory in the 1990 election, but the junta has never honored the result.