Washington: The United States indicated on Wednesday that it planned further reconciliation gestures with Myanmar in the near future after democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s party swept landmark elections.
President Barack Obama’s administration in 2009 launched a diplomatic drive to coax the country formerly known as Burma out of its long isolation and has offered to give incentives in return for progress on key concerns.
“We are prepared to match positive steps of reform in Burma with steps of our own,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “We are now looking at what might come next on the US side. I don’t have anything to announce, but I would look for more movement from us on this in the coming weeks,” she said, declining to specify what the measures would be.
Myanmar has been seeking an easing of decades worth of Western sanctions in hopes of reviving the economy in a country that was once one of Asia’s great cradles of rice production but has some of the world’s worst poverty rates.
Most sanctions, however, are under the purview of the US Congress where some lawmakers have been pressing for more action by Myanmar on other key concerns such as ending long-running conflicts in ethnic minority areas.
In return for previous actions by Myanmar, the United States has pledged aid to civil society and announced that it would restore full diplomatic relations, although Obama has yet to nominate an ambassador.
Myanmar’s President Thein Sein has surprised even critics with reforms since he took over last year, including starting dialogue with Suu Kyi, reaching ceasefires with ethnic rebels and releasing political prisoners. In an election that would have been unthinkable not long ago, Suu Kyi — a Nobel laureate who has spent most of the past two decades under house arrest — won her first seat in parliament on Sunday. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy stormed to victory in 43 of the 44 constituencies where it fielded candidates.
But most seats were not up for grabs and her party will not threaten the comfortable majority of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. (AFP)