The trip by Suu Kyi, 71, who like Obama is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, capped a decades-long journey from political prisoner to national leader after her party won a sweeping electoral victory previous year.
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For years, American businesses have been shut out of Myanmar, but the USA began easing sanctions in 2011 and is preparing to lift the last obstacles to reward further government reforms. The military and associates who profited under junta rule still have huge stakes in the economy.
By some estimates, as much as 70 percent of Myanmar’s economy is off-limits to American companies despite some easing of sanctions, according to Alexander Feldman, president and CEO of the U.S. -Asean Business Council in Washington.
Welcoming Aung San Suu Kyi to Washington DC, President Barack Obama affirmed the commitment to deepen US-Myanmar partnership.
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.
Obama didn’t specify precisely which sanctions would be lifted, but said the relief would come “soon”.
In November, when Suu Kyi was elected to her post, the USA removed certain government-run businesses and some banks from a blacklist in an attempt to jump-start trade.
With Suu Kyi no longer an opposition figure, the United States is weighing a further easing of sanctions against Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, as Obama looks to normalize relations with a country Washington shunned when it was ruled by a military junta.
The decision to end the presidential declaration of a national emergency in Myanmar – first issued by the Clinton administration in 1997 and renewed annually for the subsequent two decades – will end targeted sanctions against 38 individuals and 73 associated entities. A visa ban will still bar some former and current members of the military from traveling to the U.S.
The official and aides spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to discuss the matter ahead of Obama’s formal announcement.
“If anything, we’re enhancing it”, said Earnest, arguing that greater engagement with Myanmar would enable the United States to encourage further change.
After the meeting between the two leaders, White House spokesman Josh Earnest pushed back against allegations that the U.S. would lose crucial leverage to press the Burmese government on human rights abuses if it removed the sanctions. Massive illegal trade in goods including jade and timber continues, as does civil war with many ethnic minorities.
Congressional aides earlier said that Suu Kyi had requested the removal of the national emergency order on Myanmar – the executive order authorizing sanctions that have been renewed annually by USA presidents for two decades. Experts hope the lifting of sanctions helps change that by making it easier for US companies to invest and do business here. It estimates the industry is worth almost half of the nation’s economic output. Some 125,000 Rohingya remain in temporary camps in the country’s Western Rakhine State following violence in 2012. She said everyone entitled to citizenship in Myanmar should get it.
Suu Kyi, whose party won national elections last November, said that lifting sanctions entailed some political and economic risk, but added, “It is time now for our people to depend on themselves”. It was removed from GSP in 1989 after pro-democracy protests a year earlier were violently suppressed by the then ruling military junta.
Suu Kyi’s visit to Washington signals her transformation from long-imprisoned heroine of Myanmar’s democracy struggle to a national leader focused on economic growth. “She was imprisoned in her own house”, he said.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S., released a statement on Wednesday calling on Obama to maintain all current sanctions until the citizenship rights of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar are respected. The biggest obstacle to US investment is the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals blacklist of individuals, he said.
