အေမရိကန္သံအမတ္သစ္ရဲ႕ ပထမဆုံး သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပဲြ

~

ျမန္မာျပည္ဆုိင္ရာ အေမရိကန္သံအမတ္အျဖစ္ စတင္ တာ၀န္ထမ္းေဆာင္ျပီး ရက္ပုိင္းအတြင္း ျပဳလုပ္တ့ဲ ဒဲရစ္မစ္ခ်ယ္ရဲ႕ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲ ျမင္ကြင္း ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ဒီကေန႔ ရန္ကုန္မွာ ျပဳလုပ္တ့ဲရွင္းလင္းပဲြအတြင္း သူရဲ႕ ေျပာၾကားခ်က္မူရင္းကုိ ေဖာ္ျပေပးလုိက္ပါတယ္။
ေလာေလာဆယ္ေတာ့ ျမန္မာဘာသာျပန္ထားတာ မေတြ႔ရေသးပါ။

P R E S S R E L E A S E
U . S . E M B A S S Y R A N G O O N
1 1 0 U n i v e r s i t y A v e n u e , K a m a y u t T o w n s h i p , R a n g o o n , B u r m a

Remarks by Ambassador Derek J. Mitchell
As prepared for delivery
Friday, July 20

Thank you all very much for coming today. Before I get to an announcement, I wanted to
convey first my deep gratitude for the warm welcome I have received here from citizens and
colleagues since arriving 10 days ago on July 11. It has been an eventful and perhaps historic
10 days, and I have to say I’m already a bit tired! But there is so much work to do. I wanted
to express my particular gratitude to President U Thein Sein and his government for moving
so rapidly to allow me to present my credentials as U.S. Ambassador immediately upon my
arrival. I know this is rather unprecedented and extraordinary, and I want to make sure they
know of my – and my government’s – appreciation for their flexibility and responsiveness. It
has allowed me to get right to work this past week.

As you have heard from press reports, Secretary Clinton and President Thein Sein met last
Friday in Siem Reap. Secretary Clinton underscored U.S. support for the on-going reform
efforts here, and expressed excitement for what lies ahead. The meeting between Secretary
Clinton and President Thein Sein is a demonstration of the continued positive momentum in
our bilateral relationship and increasing cooperation between our two countries. On July 11,
the United States eased sanctions to allow American companies to do business in this
country. We believe that responsible investment will serve the long-term economic interests
of both our peoples. Here, we believe investment, done according to traditional U.S.
corporate principles and values, can contribute to broad-based economic development, help
create jobs, improve the welfare of the people of this country, and support continued
economic and political reform and national reconciliation.

A critical component of responsible investment, and of democracy more broadly, is
transparency. The United States has required American companies doing business here to
report on their activities in line with the highest standards of international corporate
governance. In fact, this reporting requirement is unprecedented for anywhere else in the
world our companies do business. We believe this requirement serves our mutual interest in
demonstrating the unique quality of our companies around the world and their commitment to
be partners in your reform process. We also hope the information will help empower civil
society to take an active role in monitoring all new investment that flows into the country.
Economic transparency is particularly critical in extractive industries, because of the amount
of money involved, and because state-owned companies like Myanmar Oil and Gas
Enterprises are entrusted with the management of this nation’s patrimony, its natural
resources. To that end, we have special requirements for US companies involved with stateowned
enterprises, including MOGE.

In addition to increasing our investment, we are also serious about increasing our
development and humanitarian assistance. As announced in April, we are reopening our
USAID mission and expanding our USAID program here. Two weeks ago, on July 5th, we
announced $3 million in assistance to support efforts to deal with humanitarian needs in
Rakhine and Kachin States, and disaster risk reduction projects across the country. Today, I
can announce we are providing $3 million in food assistance to displaced people in Kachin
and northern Shan States.

Through USAID's Office of Food For Peace, we are donating this $3 million dollars to the
World Food Program. With this contribution, WFP will purchase approximately 3,400
metric tons of rice, which will help feed 55,000 people for six months. WFP will distribute
this rice to displaced persons in Kachin and northern Shan States, in government controlled
areas as well as in areas not controlled by the government. As always, our core principle is to
provide help where it is needed and to be inclusive in our assistance, providing support to the
people of Burma whatever ethnic or religious group. Once stood up, our USAID mission will
continue to look for ways to support both immediate needs and longer-term goals in the
country, including initiatives to promote civil society and democratic development, health
needs, and other efforts in partnership with all relevant actors in this diverse society.

Thank you for listening. I can take a few questions.

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