State Dept. Sees Complex Process for Eliminating Burma Trade Sanctions
The government's interagency team "is still working through" the details of suspending trade sanctions with Burma, including getting the presidential waiver and having licenses issued by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland in a briefing with reporters June 20.
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"These sanctions, as you may know, have grown up over decades and they are multilayered, so unwinding these so that they can be suspended properly with a ... couple of pieces of paper has taken some time," Nuland said: "So we are still doing that work and we are hoping to resolve it soon."
Nuland said there will be two blanket general licenses that authorize the export of U.S. financial services for commercial transactions and that authorize investment. As they work through the process, Nuland said, "we have to be sure that we are in fact making these contingent on best practices, on good human rights practices. ... We also have to --- as we’ve said, this is a suspension. This is not a rescinding of sanctions. So we also have to make sure that this is reversible, if necessary."
Nuland said the actions are "complex legal things. There’s a lot to cover in this documentation, which is why it’s taking some time."