Obama will be the first serving
US president to set foot in the country also known as Burma, in the starkest
illustration yet of its emergence from a long period of isolation and repression.
He is expected to praise
President Thein Sein for ending a dark era of junta rule and for welcoming
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi into mainstream politics, but also to prod
the former general to go much further towards genuine democracy.
"President Thein Sein is
taking steps that move us in a better direction," Obama told a press
conference in Thailand Sunday on the first leg of a three-nation tour of
Southeast Asia, defending his decision to visit Myanmar.
"But I don't think anybody's
under any illusion that Burma's arrived," he added.
"The country has a long way
to go. I'm not somebody who thinks that the United States should stand on the
sidelines and not want to get its hands dirty when there's an opportunity for
us to encourage the better impulses inside a country."
In a scene that would have been
unthinkable until recently, Obama will on Monday stand side-by-side with
democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi at the lakeside villa where his fellow Nobel
laureate languished for years under house arrest.
The visit will be rich in
symbolism, not least when he gives a speech at Yangon University, where restive
students stoked revolt repeatedly over five decades of military rule.
The White House hopes Obama's
visit to Myanmar will boost Thein Sein's reform drive, which saw Suu Kyi enter
parliament after her rivals in the junta made way for a nominally civilian
government -- albeit in a system still stacked heavily in favour of the
military.
US officials said Obama would
announce a $170 million development aid pledge to Myanmar to coincide with the
formal opening of a US Agency for International Development (USAID) mission in
Myanmar, which was suspended for years over the junta's repression of the
democracy movement.
The money, spread over a two-year
period, will target projects in civil society designed to build democratic
institutions and improve education as Myanmar lays the groundwork of a
political system based on freedoms.
Some human rights groups said
Obama should have waited longer to visit, arguing that he could have dangled
the prospect of a trip as leverage to seek more progress such as the release of
scores of remaining political prisoners.
But officials say that Obama will
encourage the regime to double down on more reform, and that his influence
could be important at a crucial moment in Myanmar's journey along the road
towards democracy.
Myanmar unveiled new pledges on
human rights on the eve of the visit, saying it would review prisoner cases in
line with "international standards" and open its jails to the Red
Cross, as part of efforts to burnish its reform credentials.
The United States on Friday
scrapped a nearly decade-old ban on most imports from the country, after
earlier lifting other sanctions.
But it continues to call for the
release of scores of political prisoners still in Myanmar's jails, as well as
an end to sectarian bloodshed between ethnic Rakhine and Rohingya in western
Rakhine state.
Obama fever has swept Myanmar's
biggest city Yangon, with his image emblazoned on T-shirts, mugs and even
graffiti-covered walls.
"I would like to tell
President Obama to push the Myanmar government to walk the path to democracy
bravely and to aim for full human rights which our country needs," said
28-year-old shopkeeper Thant Zaw Oo.
Obama's trip to Asia, coming just
12 days after he won re-election, is the latest manifestation of his determination
to anchor the United States in a dynamic, fast-emerging region he sees as vital
to its future.
The Hawaii-born US president is
making his fifth official visit to the region, where he spent four years as a
boy in Indonesia, and is diving back into foreign policy after a year spent on
the campaign trail.
Later on Monday Obama will fly to
Cambodia, where he is likely to face a tense encounter over human rights with
Prime Minister Hun Sen, ahead of the East Asia Summit, the main institutional
focus of his pivot of US foreign policy to the region.
-AFP/ac
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