Wednesday’s meeting in Washington was the first by Aung San Suu Kyi as Myanmar’s leader since her pro-democracy party won a stunning victory over the country’s military rulers in elections past year.
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Obama spoke after an Oval Office meeting Wednesday with the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
USA economic trade sanctions on the once-isolated Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar are being eased to support the country’s transition toward democracy and a market economy.
Obama, seated beside Suu Kyi in the Oval Office, said that, as a result of her country’s “remarkable social and political transformation”, he was “now prepared to lift sanctions that we have imposed”.
Scrapping that order would bring clarity to United States firms thinking about doing business in Burma, helping the economy and with it Suu Kyi’s government.
After almost 20 years of sanctions against Myanmar, U.S. President Barack Obama said it’s time for a change.
He confirmed the move in a letter to Congress on Wednesday, adding Myanmar – also known as Burma – to the Generalised System of Preferences, a list which exempts certain countries from high import taxes.
Obama says lifting economic sanctions against Myanmar will help the country reap the benefits of its transition to democracy and unleash its “enormous potential”.
Please Wait while comments are loading. According to the Associated Press news agency, the United States government retained sanctions on military-owned companies and scores of officials of the former ruling junta.
In his meeting with Suu Kyi, Obama had hoped to ascertain whether the time was right to remove further economic sanctions on leaders in Myanmar given its ongoing move toward democracy.
And Ben Rhodes, a top adviser to Obama, told Michele that the US hoped to strike a delicate balance as it changed its policy on sanctions against Myanmar.
“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”. She also said she was eager to draw foreign visitors and investment to her country.
Some groups, however, have called for the continuation of sanctions against Myanmar, citing human rights abuses still being committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority group. It also involves an assessment of her short record in power, as well as a measure of how Myanmar fits in Washington’s “pivot to Asia” strategy and its efforts to offset China’s influence in the region.
“Suu Kyi is not pursuing things which threaten the military’s essential interests”, said Mr Richard Horsey, a Yangon-based analyst.
The State Department said announcement during the historic visit of Suu Kyi is a testament to the tremendous change Myanmar has undergone in the past few years.
She last visited Washington in 2012 when she was still opposition leader.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said the USA wants to balance concerns about the “outsized” role of the military in politics and the economy without impeding growth and offering a “democratic dividend” for an impoverished population.
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USA companies are prohibited from doing business with these companies which are on the White House blacklist. She has been criticized in the past for not being vocal about the plight of the Rohingya Muslim minority, which has always been denied citizenship in the Buddhist-majority nation.
