Washington – The Obama administration on Wednesday slammed election laws imposed by the Myanmar junta as a “mockery” of democracy as the new US policy of engagement with the military-run state suffered a blow.Under new election laws unveiled Wednesday, Myanmar opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi faces exclusion from her own party and is barred from standing in polls later this year, along with other political prisoners.

“The political party registration law makes a mockery of the democratic process and ensures the upcoming election will be devoid of credibility,” US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.

“This is not what we had suggested to the Burmese government,” Crowley told reporters when asked where US President Barack Obama’s engagement policy stands.

“Our engagement with Burma will have to continue until we can make clear that… the results thus far are not what we had expected and that they’re going to have to do better,” he added, using the country’s former name.

Obama raised guarded hopes among Myanmar’s opposition last November when he brought up Suu Kyi’s case directly with the junta during the first meeting between a US president and a Myanmar leader since 1966.

The meeting took place during a summit in Singapore with leaders of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Myanmar, and followed a rare visit to Myanmar by US Asia envoy Kurt Campbell.

The summit was a dramatic symbol of Obama’s new approach of engaging Myanmar.

Under the former administration of George W. Bush it was unthinkable that any senior US official — let alone the president himself — would meet with the military regime.

The White House said Obama asked Prime Minister Thein Sein to free all political prisoners including Suu Kyi, who has mostly been under house arrest since her party swept 1990 elections and was prevented from taking power.

But the US and ASEAN leaders made no mention at the time of Suu Kyi and only called for Myanmar to hold a free election — which the opposition has called a sham aimed at legitimizing the junta.

Crowley said the United States was “deeply disappointed” with the election law which “excludes all of Burma’s 2,000 political prisoners from political participation.

“If Burma is to advance, it is going to have to change its political process, make it more inclusive,” he said, but added it “doesn’t appear that Burma is prepared right now to open up its political process.”

He also said the junta is “going to have to find peace with the other ethnic movements inside Burma.”

The United States Campaign for Burma, an advocacy group, denounced the junta over both the election law and its repression of ethnic minorities.

The group urged the UN Security Council to press the junta to “stop its intimidation and threats against ethnic ceasefire groups and start a genuine negotiation with democracy forces and ethnic representatives to avoid mass protest, instability, and civil war.”

It expressed hope that Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would lead such an initiative.

Ahead of the election, the junta has stepped up its decades-long campaign against minority groups, with offensives against ethnic Chinese Kokang rebels in the northeast in August and the Christian Karen insurgents in June.

The Obama administration, sketching out a new policy toward Myanmar last September, pledged to engage diplomatically with the country’s military rulers in a bid to promote democratic reform there.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the possibility of an eventual easing or lifting of sanctions if US engagement produced political changes in Myanmar.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Myanmar due to its refusal to recognize the last elections in 1990 and the prolonged detention of Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) has yet to announce whether it will take part in the polls promised by the junta, which are expected in October or November although an official date has still been not set.