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Campbell said the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, he and the mission hoped to meet with the junta as well as detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and representatives of ethnic groups fighting the regime.

This is part of the new US strategy seeking to engage adversaries, including Iran, Cuba and Sudan, and it should be welcome.

Indeed, this is only a start. We should not get complacent into thinking that reason will prevail and that it will be smooth sailing from now on.

"We expect engagement with Burma to be a long, slow, painful and step-by-step process," Campbell said. He was correct when he said that engagement for its own sake is not the goal of the US or anybody for that matter.

The question is, though, where do Thailand and the Asean fit in all of this?

During Thaksin Shinawatra's administration, the then-government tried but failed to put together a "roadmap for peace".

Bangkok always felt the need to be more active than others, but the Thaksin government's actions were not only pretentious but a kiss of death from the very beginning. Thailand can never be an honest broker as long it is a stakeholder. Everything that happens inside Burma - gross labour and human rights violations as well as military offensives against ethnic armies - affects Thailand.

Asean and the UN have had several cracks at the junta but have not been able to produce anything meaningful, partly because the regional and world body did not go there with an endgame in mind.

As the US gains momentum with its approach, the Asean, UN and Thailand are going to have to rethink their Burma policy in order to remain relevant.

Let us not fool ourselves into thinking that these battle-hardened men will just lay down their arms and allow reconciliation and democratisation to take place in the country, which still has so much to offer. An exit strategy for all sides is needed and, as Campbell puts it, "it will take more than a single conversation to resolve our differences".