And as a effect, now Aung San Suu Kyi, as State Counselor, Foreign Minister, is in a position with her government to begin shaping a remarkable social and political transformation and economic transformation there. The State Department said many constraints would still remain in place, including a long-standing arms ban and barring visas for military leaders. “It is the right thing to do in order to ensure that people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business”.
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Obama didn’t specify precisely which sanctions would be lifted, but said the relief would come “soon”.
“Much of the concern in the United States was rooted in the way that that military government was treating Aung San Suu Kyi”.
President Barack Obama will meet with Suu Kyi at the White House on Wednesday and will discuss rolling back more of the sanctions that were applied when the nation was under military rule. She did so at a breakfast meeting earlier Wednesday with Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders. The sanctions did little to stem the rise of crony capitalism, but non-engagement did provide useful political and economic opportunities for neighbouring countries to bolster their influence, particularly China. But penalties meant to block the drug trade and to bar military trade with North Korea would still apply, as would a visa ban barring some former and current members of the military from travelling to the U.S. The jade trade is worth billions of dollars that flow through tangled channels to shady interests, including illicit gangs and corrupt military officials.
“The president made clear in the meeting that it’s important for the Burmese government to uphold the human rights of all religious groups inside of Burma”. A top concern is for Rohingya Muslims, who remain displaced by sectarian violence and are denied citizenship. Her qualification of lifting measures that “hurt us economically” leaves scope for retaining elements of United States legislation targeted at the military, on the grounds they have a minimal effect on the general economy.
Human rights advocates said the plight of Myanmar’s refugees is a prime reason the Obama administration should resist lifting the national emergency designation established by executive order in 1997 that allows the United States to restrict companies from doing business with specific entities in the country. The jade is mined in a region of northern Myanmar still plagued by civil conflict. Myanmar is also known as Burma.
Myanmar’s constitution still gives the military control over several key ministries and a quarter of parliament, and prohibits Suu Kyi from serving as president.
“We want to make sure that everybody who is entitled to citizenship is accorded citizenship as quickly and as fairly as possible”. “Communal strife is not something we can ignore”, she explained. In 1989 military rule the name was changed.
Caterpillar, a USA heavy machine giant, has pushed since 2012 for fewer restrictions on activity in Myanmar. Myanmar will be back in the program on November 13, United States officials said.
Ms Suu Kyi concurred it was time to remove all the sanctions which had hurt the economy in Burma.
Aung San Suu Kyi spent more than 20 years under house arrest in the country.
Obama conceded a lot of work remains, but marveled at how far Myanmar has come: “If you predicted five years ago Aung San Suu Kyi would now be here sitting as the duly elected representative of her country, many people would have been skeptical”.
Myanmar is mostly viewed as a success for Obama – and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state at the time he moved to thaw relations between Washington and Yangon.
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce hailed the announcement as “historic”.
