The U.S. has already eased economic sanctions but still restricts dealings with military-owned companies and dozens of officials and associates of the former ruling junta.
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Seated alongside Suu Kyi in the Oval Office during the meeting, Obama said it was “the right thing to do” to ensure Myanmar benefits from its transition.
Suu Kyi is a former political dissident in the country and earlier this year in March her government took power.
President Barack Obama’s move to end sanctions against Myanmar comes as he looks to cement his administration’s ” rebalance” to Asia during the final few months of his presidency.
Ms Suu Kyi, who as opposition leader was kept under house arrest for 15 years, led her National League for Democracy party to victory in Myanmar’s first openly contested election for decades in November 2015.
The economic and financial sanctions imposed on Burma under the national emergency, it said, were meant to encourage democratic transition. A congressional ban on assistance to Myanmar’s armed forces, in effect an arms and partial travel embargo, remains in place. US companies and banks have remained leery of involvement in one of Asia’s last untapped markets.
The United States would “soon” lift its sanctions against Myanmar, the US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday but stopped short of giving a time frame for this.
But the White House said it was removing a “national emergency” designation on Myanmar that had been in place for two decades, allowing for the lifting of sanctions that had prevented broad economic investment in the country. “It’s something that we continue to look at, because the objective of the sanctions regime was to support a democratic transition, and some of the sanctions even were tied to the treatment of Suu Kyi specifically”. The US-ASEAN Business Council estimates 70% of Myanmar’s economy is still considered off-limits to American companies.
“Lifting restrictions before the new government’s reforms have borne fruit effectively invites United States companies to do business with some of the worst figures from the country’s past”.
Suu Kyi has asked for all sanctions against the country to be lifted.
Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized what he described as Suu Kyi’s “dismissive” reaction to concerns he had raised about her country’s record on human trafficking.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest rejected the argument that removing sanctions would squander USA leverage on human-rights concerns.
Addressing problems in western Burma’s Rakhine state, where more than 100,000 Rohingyas remain stuck in camps, separated from Buddhists who are the majority in Myanmar, Suu Kyi said everyone entitled to citizenship in Myanmar should get it.
In 2007-2008, Bush announced a new Executive Order expanding the authority to block assets to individuals who are responsible for human rights abuses and public corruption, as well as those who provide material and financial support to the regime.
“We recognize with great respect your past work in addressing the need to halt Burma state and communal violence against the very much persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority and trust that you will continue to speak out on this immediate and pressing cause”.
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If this is the case, it may explain why both Obama and Suu Kyi have refused to comment on details or the timing of sanctions lifting, and suggests possible complications and delays to come for a bold new United States business and political approach in Myanmar.
