US to lift Myanmar sanctions

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi called on Wednesday for the lifting of economic sanctions against her country, and President Barack Obama, in their first White House meeting since she became leader, said the United States was ready to do so.

"It is the right thing to do in order to ensure that the people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business and a new government," Obama said with Suu Kyi beside him in the Oval Office.

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 last year.

With Suu Kyi no longer an opposition figure, Washington has been weighing a further easing of sanctions against Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, as Obama looks to normalize relations with a country shunned when it was ruled by a military junta.

As Suu Kyi arrived for the meeting, the White House issued a statement saying it would reinstate Myanmar to the Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, which provides duty-free treatment for goods from poor and developing countries. Myanmar will be back in the program on Nov 13, US officials said.

After visiting the White House, Suu Kyi met with some members of the House of Representatives at the US Capitol. She was to return there yesterday6 for meetings with House and Senate leaders from both parties.

Some members of Congress have expressed concerns about change in Myanmar and its human rights record.

Republican US Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, commented after meeting with Suu Kyi that while the new administration brought hope to Myanmar, he remained committed to efforts to protect its oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority.

For Obama to lift sanctions, he would need to issue an executive order ending the national emergency declaration on Myanmar, first issued in 1997, which underpins sanctions, and revoke previous country-related sanction orders.

A senior administration official said the removal of sanctions would not apply to military-to-military assistance.

In a statement on Myanmar, the State Department said that several restrictions would remain in place, including barring visas for military leaders.

Suu Kyi has been criticized for doing too little to address the plight of the Rohingya, some 125,000 of whom have been housed in temporary camps since violence in 2012.

Myanmar law does not recognize the Rohingya as one of the country's 135 official ethnic groups, making them stateless. Seen as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, they are deeply disliked by many in Myanmar.