Obama makes history with Myanmar, Cambodia visits

U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, cen­ter, stands with Cambodia’s Prime Min­is­ter Hun Sen, right, and Vietnam’s Prime Min­is­ter Nguyen Tan Dung dur­ing a fam­ily photo ses­sion of the East Asia Sum­mit at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cam­bo­dia, Mon­day. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

JULIE PACE

Asso­ci­ated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cam­bo­dia — On a history-making trip, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on Mon­day paid the first visit by an Amer­i­can leader to Myan­mar and Cam­bo­dia, two Asian coun­tries with trou­bled his­to­ries, one on the mend and the other still a cause of concern.

Obama’s fast-paced, pre-Thanksgiving trip vividly illus­trated the dif­fer­ent paths the regional neigh­bors are tak­ing to over­come lega­cies of vio­lence, poverty and repression.

Cheered by mas­sive flag-waving crowds, Obama offered long-isolated Myan­mar a “hand of friend­ship” as it rapidly embraces demo­c­ra­tic reforms. Hours later, he arrived in Cam­bo­dia to lit­tle fan­fare, then point­edly crit­i­cized the country’s strong­man leader on the issue of human rights dur­ing a tense meeting.

Obama was an early cham­pion of Myanmar’s sud­den trans­for­ma­tion to civil­ian rule fol­low­ing a half-century of mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship. He’s rewarded the coun­try, also known as Burma, with eased eco­nomic penal­ties, increased U.S. invest­ment and now a pres­i­den­tial visit, in part to show other nations the ben­e­fits of pur­su­ing sim­i­lar reforms.

“You’re tak­ing a jour­ney that has the poten­tial to inspire so many peo­ple,” Obama said dur­ing a speech at Myanmar’s Uni­ver­sity of Yangon.

The Cam­bo­di­ans are among those Obama is hop­ing will be moti­vated. White House offi­cials said he held up Myan­mar, a once-pariah state, as a bench­mark dur­ing his pri­vate meet­ing Mon­day evening with Prime Min­is­ter Hun Sen, the auto­cratic Cam­bo­dian leader who has held power for nearly 30 years. Hun Sen’s rivals have some­times ended up in jail or in exile.

Unlike the arrange­ment after Obama’s meet­ings with Myanmar’s Pres­i­dent Thein Sein and democ­racy leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the U.S. and Cam­bo­dian lead­ers did not speak to the press fol­low­ing their one-on-one talks. They did step before cam­eras briefly before their meet­ing to greet each other with a brisk hand­shake and lit­tle warmth.

In pri­vate, U.S. offi­cials said, Obama pressed Hun Sen to release polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, stop land seizures and hold free and fair elec­tions. Aides acknowl­edged the meet­ing was tense, with the Cam­bo­dian leader defend­ing his prac­tices, even as he pro­fessed to seek a deeper rela­tion­ship with the U.S.

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national secu­rity adviser, said the pres­i­dent told Hun Sen that with­out reforms, Cambodia’s human rights woes would con­tinue to be “an imped­i­ment” to that effort.

White House offi­cials empha­sized that Obama would not have vis­ited Cam­bo­dia had it not been host­ing two regional sum­mit meet­ings the U.S. attends, a rare admon­ish­ment of a coun­try on its own soil.

The Cam­bo­dian peo­ple appeared to answer Obama’s cold shoul­der in kind. Just a few small clus­ters of curi­ous Cam­bo­di­ans gath­ered on the streets to watch his motor­cade speed though the streets of Phnom Penh.

A wel­come sign did greet Obama upon his arrival — but it her­alded Chi­nese Pre­mier Wen Jiabao, not the Amer­i­can president.

Human rights groups fear that because Obama deliv­ered his con­dem­na­tion of Hun Sen in pri­vate, gov­ern­ment cen­sors will keep his words from reach­ing the Cam­bo­dian peo­ple. And they worry the prime min­is­ter will then use Obama’s visit to jus­tify his grip on power and weaken the will of oppo­si­tion groups.

“If Hun Sen’s nar­ra­tive about this visit is allowed to gel, it will cre­ate a per­cep­tion that the United States and other inter­na­tional actors stand with Hun Sen, and not with the Cam­bo­dian peo­ple,” said John Sifton, Asia direc­tor at Human Rights Watch. “It will be a tremen­dous blow to Cam­bo­di­ans who chal­lenge his rule.”

Obama’s visit to Myan­mar was also viewed crit­i­cally by some inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions, which saw the trip as a pre­ma­ture reward for a coun­try that still holds polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and has been unable to con­tain ethic violence.

Aware of that crit­i­cism, Obama tem­pered some of his praise for Myan­mar dur­ing his six-hour visit. He under­scored that the reforms that have taken hold over the past year are “just the first steps on what will be a long journey.”

Per­haps the sharpest calls for cau­tion came from Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s long­time democ­racy cham­pion. After meet­ing with Obama at the home where she spent years under house arrest, she warned that the most dif­fi­cult part of the tran­si­tion will be “when we think that suc­cess is in sight.”

“Then we have to be very care­ful that we’re not lured by the mirage of suc­cess,” Suu Kyi said, speak­ing with Obama by her side.

The pres­i­dent, wind­ing down his first for­eign trip after win­ning re-election, had meet­ings sched­uled in Cam­bo­dia Tues­day with his coun­ter­parts in the East Asia Sum­mit. Obama has added the sum­mit to his annual list of high-priority inter­na­tional meet­ings as he seeks to expand U.S. influ­ence in the region.

Obama will also meet sep­a­rately on the side­lines of the sum­mit with Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Yoshi­hiko Noda and with Wen, the Chi­nese pre­mier. It’s likely to be Obama’s last bilat­eral meet­ings with both men.

Noda dis­solved his country’s par­lia­ment last week, set­ting the stage for new elec­tions his party is unlikely to win. And China is under­go­ing its first lead­er­ship tran­si­tion in a decade, with Wen and Pres­i­dent Hu Jin­tao step­ping down to clear the way for new lead­ers in the country’s Com­mu­nist Party.

Obama will return to Wash­ing­ton before dawn Wednes­day, in time for the cer­e­mo­nial par­don­ing of the Thanks­giv­ing turkey.

Posted by AP News on Nov 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.