UN leader Ban Ki-moon said Saturday he would visit Burma as soon as possible to propel reforms, in the latest high-profile mission triggered by hopes of a shift to democracy.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will also travel to Burma on 1-2 December, to investigate whether the new military-backed leadership there is serious about allowing political and economic change.

Ban said on the sidelines of an East Asia Summit where President Barack Obama Friday announced Clinton’s historic visit — the first by a US secretary of state in 50 years — that he would visit Burma “as soon as possible”.

He said that in talks with Burma’s President Thein Sein he urged more progress on the fledgling reforms which have seen the government hold direct talks with opposition leader Aung Suu Suu Kyi.

“I strongly urged him it is not necessary to wait ’til 2014 but even before that they should take all the political reforms,” Ban said, referring to the date when Burma will host the Southeast Asian bloc’s annual summit.

“I told him that there will be huge expectations… and he should meet the expectations of the international community.”

UN envoy to Burma, Vijay Nambiar, said Ban’s visit had not been finalised but it would take place “in the next few months”.

Burma has called for its reform gestures to be rewarded with the lifting of punishing sanctions imposed by the United States and other nations during its decades of military rule.

“I think there is a movement now to consider looking at these issues again,” Nambiar said of the sanctions, adding that the decision was “for the countries concerned” to make.

“I think it is important that the people, the livelihoods of the people… are developed. All actions should be taken in order to reach that goal,” he said.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy said Friday it would re-register as a political party and contest coming by-elections after boycotting last year’s poll, paving the way for the 66-year-old Nobel laureate to run for office.

Obama said Friday after a phone call with Suu Kyi that Clinton would travel to Burma to encourage apparent stirrings of democracy from a new nominally civilian regime, in a country which for decades was ruled by a military junta.

After “years of darkness, we have seen flickers of progress in the last several weeks” in Burma, Obama said.

Burma’s 2010 election, which brought the army’s political proxies to power after decades of outright military rule, was widely seen as a sham.

But since then, in developments Suu Kyi said this week were “encouraging”, the regime has freed some 200 dissidents from prison, frozen work on an unpopular mega-dam and passed a law giving workers the right to strike.

“The United Nations welcomes, just as ASEAN did, the recent developments… under the leadership of President Thein Sein,” Ban said after the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this week decided to allow Burma to chair the bloc in 2014.

“It is true that Myanmar [Burma] has been a source of concern because of a lack of democratisation and oppressive rule.”

Nambiar welcomed the return of Suu Kyi’s opposition party to the political arena.

“It is a positive development because it will make for a more inclusive political process inside Myanmar and that is something to be welcomed,” he said.