Myanmar’s Suu Kyi begins landmark US visit

Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi (C) holds a bouquet flowers as she walks through the international airport in Yangon on September 16, 2012. Suu Kyi leaves Myanmar on September 16 for her first visit in two decades to the United States, where she will be garlanded by supporters keen to discuss the progress of reforms in the former junta-ruled nation. AFP / Ye Aung Thu

WASHINGTON — Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be honored in Washington this week and presented Congress’s highest award, the latest milestone in her remarkable journey from political prisoner to globe-trotting stateswoman.

The Nobel Peace laureate’s 17-day U.S. tour, starting Monday, which will include meetings at the State Department and likely the White House. She then goes to New York, the American Midwest and California. The trip comes as the Obama administration considers easing its remaining sanctions on the country also known as Burma.

Since her release from house arrest in late 2010, Suu Kyi has transitioned from dissident to parliamentarian as Myanmar has shifted from five decades of repressive military rule, gaining international acceptance for a former pariah regime.

After being confined to her homeland since 1989 because she was either under detention or afraid she wouldn’t be permitted to return, Suu Kyi has in the past four months spread her wings. She has traveled to Thailand and five nations in Europe, where she was accorded honors usually reserved for heads of state.

Revered by Republicans and Democrats alike, Suu Kyi will get star treatment too in the U.S., although her schedule is being carefully planned to avoid upstaging the itinerary of Myanmar President Thein Sein, who arrives in the U.S. the following week to attend the U.N. General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders in New York.

“The idea that she will be at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, to receive the highest award Congress can give, just a couple of years after she was under house arrest in her own country, is just remarkable,” said Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley, one of the lawmakers who sponsored her 2008 award of the Congressional Gold Medal.

For years, some of Washington’s most powerful politicians have been among Suu Kyi’s strongest advocates, and it’s been a rare area of bipartisan consensus. Both when sanctions against the Myanmar junta were imposed, and over the past year when they have been suspended, Democrats and Republicans have found common cause.

The Obama administration is now considering easing a ban on imports from Myanmar into the U.S., the main plank remaining in the tough economic sanctions that Washington has chipped away at this year to reward the progress toward democracy.

While Congress last month renewed the sanctions for another year, President Barack Obama could waive its provisions. He may, however, look for further concrete action by Myanmar to earn it — such as the releases of hundreds of political prisoners who remain in detention despite the freeing of hundreds of other dissidents this year.

Suu Kyi is under political pressure from Thein Sein’s government to press the U.S. to remove the restrictions — and it’s a step that she appears open to, although many of her longtime supporters in exile oppose it, saying Myanmar should not be rewarded at a time when ethnic violence is escalating in some parts of the country.

“We don’t want to say whether the U.S should maintain the import ban or not,” Suu Kyi’s party spokesman Nyan Win said ahead of her visit. “I understand the U.S is keeping the import ban because they want to keep a watch on the country’s political and economic reform and I think the U.S should continue to observe (the situation).”

Combining high-level meetings with award ceremonies and get-togethers with Burmese expatriates, Suu Kyi will have a frenetic schedule in the U.S.

She spends four days in Washington, where she will meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — who made a landmark visit to Myanmar last December — and House and Senate leaders. The White House has yet to announce whether she will meet President Barack Obama. Suu Kyi will also address human rights activists and meet Burmese journalists at Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

She then travels to New York, where she worked from 1969-71 at the United Nations. Her schedule is carefully arranged not to clash with Thein Sein’s but she is slated to attend a high-level meeting organized by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a day before the Myanmar leader addresses the General Assembly.

Suu Kyi will then go to Kentucky — home state of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell — to address the University of Louisville, before traveling to meet with one of America’s largest Burmese communities in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She will also visit San Francisco and Los Angeles.