YANGON, Myanmar – A senior U.S. official will visit Myanmar next week in line with Washington’s new policy of engaging the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation, a Foreign Ministry official said Thursday.

The Obama administration said Wednesday that U.S. officials plan to travel to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in the next few weeks to talk with government representatives, ethnic minority groups and the democratic opposition.

The Myanmar Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by name because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said a high-ranking U.S. official would visit next week as part of the new approach by Washington, which has shunned Myanmar in the past.

He declined to give the name of the U.S. official.

Myanmar’s opposition National League for Democracy party of detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said the U.S. Embassy had informed it of an upcoming visit by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt M. Campbell and that he would meet with party officials.

“We welcome the visit by a senior-level official from the U.S. and hope that he would be allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi,” party spokesman Nyan Win said.

The Obama administration is turning away from the Bush administration’s policy of shunning Myanmar in favor of direct, high-level talks. It has said isolating the military government has failed to move it toward democratic reforms.

During testimony Wednesday to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Campbell said the government would maintain existing political and economic sanctions toward the junta.

“The conclusions of our policy review, announced last month, reaffirmed our fundamental interests in Burma: We support a unified, peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Burma,” he said. “Our dialogue with Burma will supplement rather than replace the sanctions regime that has been at the center of our Burma policy for many years.”

Campbell said he would travel to Myanmar to continue talks he began in September in New York with senior Myanmar officials, the first such high-level contact in nearly a decade. He cautioned that “it will take more than a single conversation to resolve our differences.”

He said tough U.S. sanctions will remain until talks with Myanmar’s generals result in change, explaining that if Myanmar doesn’t address U.S. worries, “we will reserve the option of tightening sanctions on the regime and its supporters as appropriate.”