President Barack Obama and President
Ts. Elbegdorj discussed steps to expand diplomatic, economic and defense
cooperation between the two nations during an afternoon meeting in the Oval
Office in the White House on Thursday. The two leaders said in a joint
statement released after their meeting they shared common interests in
promoting freedom and human rights.

The US and Mongolia have common
interests in “protecting and promoting freedom, democracy and human rights
worldwide, and confirmed their intention to strengthen trade, investment and
people-to-people ties so as to support economic growth and deepen the bonds of
friendship between their two peoples,” the statement said. “Mongolia
welcomed and supported the key role played by the United States as an
Asia-Pacific nation in securing peace, stability and prosperity in the
region,” it said.

The two nations also decided to
“explore mutually advantageous activities in nuclear energy based on the
September 2010 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries,” and
the United States “applauded Mongolia”s nuclear-weapons-free status.”

Mongolia is a U.S. friend that
merits increased U.S. attention, Elbegdorj said before  his meeting with Obama. “Sometimes you
have to pay attention to your friends,” Elbegdorj told The Washington
Post.

The United States, like long-ago
superpower Mongolia, “has a responsibility to help those who are trying to
follow in its steps,” said Elbegdorj, whose market-economy nation is a
parliamentary republic that holds regular elections and lets power pass
peacefully between rival parties.

Vice President Joe Biden and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are to visit the giant, landlocked,
minerals-rich country bordered by Russia to the north and the China to the
south, east and west.

Mongolia — which broke free from
China in 1921 but then was under heavy Soviet influence until the early 1990s
— is the 19th-largest independent and the most sparsely populated country in
the world, with about 2.8 million people occupying an area the size of western
and central Europe combined.

The country is now a U.S. ally —
sending troops to support U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq — has a vibrant
free press, allows street protests and does not routinely harass critics, the
Post said. “Maybe if we caused problems — if we hid [Osama] bin Laden or
atom bombs — America would pay more attention,” Elbegdorj joked.

U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia Jonathan
Addleton said Mongolia — which gets about USD10 million a year in U.S.
assistance — would be “in a better place when it moves from an aid
relationship to commercial relationships, as it is doing now.” Mongolia
plans to buy three airplanes from Boeing Co., Elbegdorj told the Post, with the
deal to be announced soon.

The World Bank recently described
Mongolia”s prospects for economic growth — due in part to its rich mineral
resources, including copper, coal, molybdenum, tin, tungsten and gold — as
“excellent”. “The values connection is very important,”
Elbegdorj said. “We have to strengthen that connection. If America invests
in that, America will have many friends [in Mongolia] who live on their own,
not with bombs or American troops.”