REUTERS - The United States will pursue both engagement with and sanctions against Myanmar in an effort to push its military leaders toward democratic reform, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.

“We believe that sanctions remain important as part of our policy but by themselves they have not produced the results that had been hoped for,” Clinton told reporters. “Engagement versus sanctions is a false choice in our opinion, so going forward we will be employing both of those tools.”

Clinton repeated U.S. demands that Myanmar’s military rulers immediately release opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, embark on credible democratic reform and engage in serious dialogue with the opposition and ethnic minorities.

The U.S. secretary of state, who earlier this year had raised some expectations that the United States might be rethinking its economic sanctions on Myanmar, made clear that these were likely to stay in place.

However, she also stressed the U.S. desire to deal with country’s military rulers.

“To help achieve democratic reform, we will be engaging directly with Burmese authorities ... There will be more to report as we go forward,” Clinton added, without elaborating.

Myanmar plans to hold its first election in two decades next year, which the junta says will bring an end to almost five decades of unbroken military rule. However, many analysts suspect that the generals will still hold the real power.

Relations between the United States and Myanmar have been strained this year by the junta’s conviction of Suu Kyi for an internal security breach.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has spent 14 of the past 20 years in some form of detention, was sentenced on Aug. 12 to another 18 months of house arrest, enough to keep her off the campaign trail for next year’s planned elections.