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Obama cries at a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa. During an address to campaign staff in Chicago, Obama again broke down as he thanked the workers for their hard work. (AP)
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Yangon/Washington, Nov. 9 (Reuters): President Barack Obama will become the first US leader to visit Myanmar this month, the strongest international endorsement of the fragile democratic transition in the southeast Asian country after half a century of military rule.
Obama will travel to Myanmar during a November 17-20 tour of southeast Asia that will also take in Thailand and Cambodia, the White House said yesterday, confirming his first international trip since he won a second term in Tuesday’s election. He is going ahead with the trip despite recent violence in western Myanmar that has drawn concern from the US and EU.
UN human rights investigators have criticised the quasi-civilian government’s handling of the strife between Buddhists and minority Muslims, and some Myanmar exiles see Obama’s trip as premature before political reforms have been consolidated.
The visit to Myanmar, the first by a sitting US President, will give Obama a chance to meet President Thein Sein and Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to encourage the “ongoing democratic transition”, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Suu Kyi spent years in detention under the military as the figurehead of the movement for democracy. She was elected to parliament in April, when her National League for Democracy ran in by-elections after boycotting a 2010 poll.
Obama will be in Myanmar on November 19, according to a senior government source in Yangon.
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