WASHINGTON (AP) — Less than two weeks after his re-election,
President Barack Obama will become the first U.S. president to visit the once
pariah nation of Burma, drawing attention to the country’s shift to democracy
and highlighting what his administration regards as a marquee foreign policy
achievement.
Obama will also travel to
Cambodia, a first for a U.S. president as well, and to Thailand during the Nov.
17-20 trip. In Cambodia, the president will attend the East Asia summit in
Phnom Penh and meet with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The symbolic highlight of the
trip, no doubt, is Obama’s stop in Burma, also known as Myanmar, a country
emerging from five decades of ruinous military rule. While there, Obama will
meet with President Thein Sein and also with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
the White House said.
While the trip places new focus
on Obama’s foreign policy and to American attention to the Asia and Pacific
region, it also comes at as Obama begins sensitive negotiations with
congressional leaders about how to avoid looming tax increases and steep cuts
in defense and domestic spending.
Obama ended the longstanding U.S.
isolation of Burma’s generals, which has played a part in coaxing them into
political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year.
The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward
Burma for political prisoner releases and Suu Kyi’s election to parliament.
In a statement, White House press
secretary Jay Carney said Obama intended to “speak to civil society to encourage
Burma’s ongoing democratic transition.”
A procession of senior diplomats
and world leaders have traveled to the country, stopping both in the remote,
opulent capital city Naypyitaw, built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu
Kyi’s dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city Yangon, where she spent 15
years under house arrest.
The East Asia Summit in Cambodia
will also provide Obama with opportunities for possible sideline discussions
with a number of fellow heads of state, including leaders such as outgoing
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Also expected to attend are Russian President
Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.
“The Burma trip is potentially
historic, and for that reason has both tremendous opportunity and risk
associated with,” said Matthew Goodman, a former Obama international economics
adviser.
But the East Asia Summit, he
added, is also important “as an opportunity to reaffirm U.S. engagement as an
Asia-Pacific power in regional affairs and for the newly re-elected president
to touch base with all the relevant regional allies, partners and other
countries.”
“There’s going to be great
interest in understanding his aspirations for his second term, and on Obama’s
side for reassuring these other countries about continuity and desire for
continued engagement,” Goodman, now at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said.
As for Burma, the most senior
U.S. official to visit previously is Hillary Rodham Clinton who in December
became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Burma in 56 years.
The Obama administration regards
the political changes in Burma as one that could dilute the influence of China
in a country that has a strategic location between South Asia and Southeast
Asia, regions of growing economic importance.
But exiled Burma activists and
human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature and one
that rewards Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have been
consolidated. The military is still dominant and implicated in rights abuses.
It has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of
the country that have left scores dead.
While no U.S. president has ever
visited Cambodia or Burma, Thailand is one of the America’s oldest allies in Asia
and has been a stop for American commanders in chief since the mid-1960s,
according to the State Department historian’s office, which compiles records on
presidential travel.
George W. Bush visited Thailand
twice while president, in 2003 and 2008, Bill Clinton visited in 1996. During
the war in neighboring Vietnam, Richard Nixon traveled there in 1969 and Lyndon
Johnson in 1966 and 1967, the records show.
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. Since we are currently changing the platform of www.yourvietnamexpert.com, you may contact us at: sbc.pte@gmail.com, provisionally. Many thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment