WASHINGTON – The White House is lifting economic sanctions and restoring trade benefits to former pariah state Myanmar, officials said Wednesday, as Aung San Suu Kyi, a former political prisoner and now the nation's de facto leader, met with President Barack Obama. Ahead of Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit, Human Rights Watch said the sanctions targeted military officials, and “shouldn’t be fully lifted until the democratic transition is irreversible.”

 Ms Suu Kyi, who as opposition leader was kept under house arrest for 15 years, led her National League for Democracy party to victory in Myanmar’s first openly contested election for decades in November 2015. “In some ways it is a risk, it as much a political risk as an economic risk, because there are those who believe it is not yet time for us to remove the sanctions, but we think that it is time now for our people to depend on themselves, to go forward with the help of our friends,” Suu Kyi said of the decision. Suu Kyi says that lifting sanctions entails some political and economic risk, but adds, “It is time now for our people to depend on themselves.”

Obama aide Ben Rhodes says the so-called “national emergency” with respect to Myanmar that authorizes the sanctions will be terminated in the “coming days.”
Burmese State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi asks U.S. businesses to invest in Myanmar after Barack Obama agrees to lift U.S. sanctions.