Obama orders economic sanctions on Myanmar lifted

WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Barack Obama on Friday lifted US economic sanctions on the former pariah state of Myanmar, the culmination of years of rapprochement that Obama has worked to facilitate.

The Southeast Asian nation, also known as Burma, has pursued political reforms over the last five years following decades of oppressive military rule.

Obama had announced plans to lift the sanctions last month, when Myanmar’s new civilian leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, visited the Oval Office. Suu Kyi concurred it was time to remove all the sanctions that had hurt the economy and urged Americans to come to the country and ``to make profits.’’

The US has already eased broad prohibitions on investment and trade but had retained more targeted restrictions on military-owned companies and officials and associates of the former ruling junta. US companies and banks have remained leery of involvement in one of Asia’s last untapped markets.

Friday’s executive order lifts those restrictions. It removes the national emergency with respect to Myanmar — the executive order authorizing sanctions that has been renewed annually by US presidents for two decades. It also lifts a ban on the importation of jadeite and rubies from Myanmar, and removes banking restrictions.

“I have determined that the situation that gave rise to the national emergency with respect to Burma has been significantly altered by Burma’s substantial advances to promote democracy, including historic elections in November 2015,” Obama wrote in a letter to the leaders of Congress. He said the US intends to use other means to support Myanmar in the ``significant challenges’’ it still faces.

Some Myanmar nationals will remain on the Treasury Department’s list of Specially Designated Nationals under other sanctions authorities, such as those intended to block the drug trade, a Treasury statement said. This bars them from any business dealings with the US. They include alleged drugs kingpin Wei Hsueh Kang and other figures from the United Wa State Army, one of Myanmar’s biggest ethnic armed groups.

Among those taken off are ex- junta chief, Than Shwe, and the founder of one of the nation’s largest conglomerates, Stephen Law, whose late father was once described by Treasury as one of the world’s key heroin traffickers.