Friday, 13 January 2012 15:09 Mizzima News
(Mizzima) – A long-time advocate of democracy in Burma, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, will visit Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday. He first introduced legislation calling for U.S. sanctions in 1993.
“It’s exciting,” McConnell told the The Courier-Journal newspaper in Kentucky. He will have a 90-minute meeting with Suu Kyi at her home in Rangoon, and also meet with Burmese government officials.
“Candidly, I never really thought there was much chance that things were going to change” in Burma, McConnell said. But there clearly is a reform faction in the Burmese military, he told the newspaper, “and we are pulling for that faction to continue to prevail.”
McConnell said that he hoped the U.S. could have an ambassador in Burma in the “not too distant future” and might consider eliminating sanctions “at some point.”
He has spoken with Suu Kyi by telephone three times, he said.
Suu Kyi likes President Thein Sein, he said, “and believes he’s a genuine reformer.”
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