Republican vice presidential nominee Richard Cheney has defended his former company's business dealings in Myanmar despite widespread human rights abuses in the Southeast Asian country.
"It was fully in compliance with US policy and our conduct around the world," Cheney told CNN's "Larry King Live" show late Friday.
Cheney had been chief executive at Halliburton, a major US oil service company, for five years prior to being chosen in late July by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush as his running mate.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Halliburton landed a contract in Myanmar in 1996 to participate in building an undersea pipeline.
One year later, the United States banned new US investment in the country in a bid to isolate its military regime that was brutally suppressing opposition parties.
But Halliburton remained in Myanmar even though most US companies, including oil giants Texaco and Atlantic Richfield had pulled out, the Journal reported.
Since the sanctions did not cover investments made prior to 1997 or oil-service companies, Halliburton's continued presence in Myanmar did not appear to violate any laws but was "potentially embarrassing," the paper concluded.
"We did not support the regime," Cheney told CNN. "We were there because we had competed on a contract to lay some undersea pipeline offshore in Myanmar."
He said Halliburton operates in 120 countries of the world, some of which are not governed in accordance with principles accepted in the United States.
"The world is not made up only of democracies," he said -- WASHINGTON (AFP)
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