Suu Kyi issued a statement saying she accepted that policy and would be open to working with the junta in order to get economic sanctions against the country lifted.

Previously, Suu Kyi has staunchly opposed lifting any sanctions against the current regime in Myanmar.

Clinton said her announcement was part of a policy review announced in February, which was slowed down in May when Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest again after the Yettaw incident, according to a senior State Department official who talked to reporters on condition that he was not named.

He added that Washington would only consider lifting sanctions “if Burma made progress toward addressing our concerns on the core political issues.”

“But at this point, they haven’t made any such progress,” the official said.

Myanmar’s military junta, which has ruled the country since 1962, changed the English translation of the country’s name from Burma in 1989, but Suu Kyi’s supporters and several governments still use the older name.

Webb, who chairs the East Asia and Pacific affairs subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also met with Suu Kyi during that trip.

According to the U.N. statement, in his meeting with Thein Sein on Monday, Ban “reiterated his clear expectation that Myanmar will respond in a timely manner to the proposals he left with the senior leadership of Myanmar during his visit. In particular, the Secretary-General made clear that the onus was on the government to create the necessary conditions for credible and inclusive elections, including the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners, as well as dialogue with all stakeholders.”

Monday’s meeting between Webb and the Myanmar prime minister comes at a time when the United States is shifting its policy with the Southeast Asian nation.

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the United States will try to directly engage with Myanmar’s military leaders without abandoning its existing sanctions.

“Some powerful nations have been resorting to economic sanctions to pressure developing countries,” Thein Sein said. “Their aim is to influence the political economic system of those countries without taking into account the historical and cultural backgrounds.

“Sanctions have no moral basis as they not only hinder the economic and social development of the people, but also interfere in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of the country.”

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also met Monday with Thein Sein, according to a U.N. statement.

Last month, Webb became the first American official to meet with Myanmar’s junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, when Webb went to Myanmar to secure the release of American John Yettaw. Yettaw was sentenced to seven years of hard labor after swimming to the home of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon where she has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years.

Sen. Jim Webb will meet with Myanmar’s prime minister Monday on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, the Virginia Democrat’s office announced.

“I look forward to continuing the dialogue with Prime Minister Thein Sein that was begun last month,” said Webb, according to a statement from his office.

Gen. Thein Sein is the highest official from Myanmar, also known as Burma, to attend the U.N. annual gathering in 14 years, the statement said. He addressed the assembly Monday morning, in which he spoke about working with other countries to alleviate the impact of the global economic crisis on his country.

He also took the opportunity to reject economic sanctions, which have been the heart of U.S. policy toward the military-led country.

“The Air Force pays high attention to the artificial weather manipulation and we believe that the more equipment applied, the larger the area we can manipulate and the better weather we can have,” Cui Lianqing, deputy director of meteorological department in China Air Force told Xinhua.

Transport planes will sprinkle environment-friendly catalysts to eliminate clouds and reduce rainfall, Cui said.

According to statistics from the Air Force for the past four decades, there is a 36 percent chance of low clouds and a less than 20 percent chance of rainfall on Oct 1 in the capital.

The plan said that if low clouds and mild or moderate rains are a possibility on Oct 1, the air force will cooperate with the municipal metrological bureau to spray the catalyst in the sky before daybreak, Xinhua reported.

If there is heavy fog near the training airbase for the National Day air parade, fog-clearing vehicles will blow it off. This is a widely-accepted practice at some foreign airports, the plan said.

Since September, the air force has carried out six weather-control experiments and gained good results with 10 fog-clearing vehicles, Xinhua reported.

Zheng Guoguang, head of the China Meteorological Administration, said yesterday that the weather for the National Day parade is a challenge with the complicated weather situation.

Meanwhile, China Air Force is preparing to manipulate the weather to ensure a sunny day for the coming Oct 1.

In order to keep clouds, rain and fog away from the sky, the air force has prepared 18 converted transport planes and 48 fog-clearing vehicles with more than 260 soldiers to attend to weather-control measures, Xinhua reported.

So far 10 of the 18 planes have arrived at the Shanxi airbase for preparation for rain reduction on National Day, while the rest are at Zhangjiakou waiting for a commander from Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau, it reported.

Nevertheless, some believe the arrest of the 76-year-old Academy Award winner could lead to a resolution that will allow him to once again travel freely.

“I think he will finally get his day in court,” criminal defense attorney Steve Cron said, “and there’s a good chance his case will be dismissed or the sentence will be commuted to time served.”

Meanwhile, Poland and France intend to make a joint appeal to Switzerland and the United States to have Polanski released from his detention, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told the Polish news agency PAP. Sikorski said he and French counterpart Bernard Kouchner also plan to ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to offer Polanski clemency.

“The good news for him is he’s been living under a cloud all these years wondering who would swoop in and arrest him,” Cron said. “Now he can get this thing finally worked out.”

A surprise arrest at the Zurich airport, detention at the hands of Swiss authorities, and a high-profile extradition process that could take weeks or months. The irony is that for Roman Polanski, the acclaimed director accused of child rape three decades ago, this latest ordeal could lead to the one thing he’s lacked since: his freedom.

Polanski’s arrest as he arrived Saturday in Switzerland for a film festival honor could potentially spur on his legal team’s recent motion to dismiss charges that have dogged him since he fled the U.S. for France in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl.

But it could also elevate his case into an international ordeal — involving the governments of Switzerland, France, Poland and the United States — and potentially complicate his possible extradition.

“The big issue is whether it would have been better for him to negotiate a surrender when he had the chance,” Loyola University law professor Laurie Levenson said. “Now it has become an international incident and the district attorney may be under pressure not to negotiate a sweetheart deal. They’ve gone to all this trouble of getting Switzerland involved. It could make it harder on him.”

Australia should replace the Netherlands as senior coalition partner in Oruzgan province of Afghanistan when Dutch forces leave in August next year, the Australia Defense Association (ADA) said on Monday.

That would require up to 2,000 more troops, on top of 1,500 already in Afghanistan, including combat support units assets such as artillery and attack helicopters.

“We should be the senior partner in the province to back up our strategic alliance with the Americans a lot better,” the association’s executive director Neil James said.

Tactically and operationally on the ground it would be better if the Australians were in charge and not the Americans.

“Not just from our point of view, but probably from the point of view of the Afghans because our operational culture and philosophy is different from the Americans.”

The U.S. is now debating a report from its Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal calling for more troops.

James said the Americans had been expecting their allies to do much more for a long time, although Australia was being pressured less than European coalition members.

The elders of Mehsud tribe at the jirga demanded an immediate halt to drone attacks in South Waziristan and the government should provide safe exit to the people who wanted to migrate. They also urged the government to avoid taking indiscriminate action against the tribe, saying that all the Mehsuds are not militants, according to local newspaper DAWN.

Earlier, the tribal elders have said that they are against Taliban and want peace in the area. They said that the people of Federally Administered Tribal Area have given many sacrifices for the country and in the future, they would not hesitate to do so.

The Mehsud tribe, part of the lawless tribal regions along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, is considered as the base of Baitullah Mehsud, former chief of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, who was killed in the United States drone missile attack in early August. Taliban and Al-Qaida leaders are believed to be hiding in the area where the U.S. has intensified drone attacks this year.

Pakistan has not decided whether it should launch a full-scale ground military operation in the Waziristan tribal areas against Taliban militants, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told media on Sunday.