In Washington for summit, Asean leaders to meet with top US government, business officials
- Along with President Joe Biden, the Southeast Asian leaders will have talks with Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Antony Blinken and American CEOs
- Topics for discussion include China, the mainland’s relations with Taiwan, Myanmar and how the war in Ukraine might affect the Indo-Pacific region
At the upcoming meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, US President Joe Biden hopes to make clear that the United States is committed to expanding its engagement with member countries, the White House’s coordinator for the Indo-Pacific region said on Wednesday.
“In the past, Asean relations was managed by or engaged with deeply committed professionals, generally a small group from the State Department, USAID and perhaps a few other agencies,” said Kurt Campbell said, referring to the US Agency for International Development.
“What we’ve tried to do in this set of meetings is to broaden to the entirety of the US government. Every major official is involved in events and engagements,” Campbell said in remarks at the US Institute of Peace in Washington.
The gathering, which takes place on Thursday and Friday, will be the second US-Asean Special Leaders’ Summit since 2016, when president Barack Obama hosted leaders of the 10-member bloc in California.
Details about the leaders’ itinerary were announced on Wednesday, including meetings with US lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
On Thursday, they will have a bipartisan working lunch with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other senior lawmakers. That will be followed by a meeting with American business leaders and talks with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Biden will host a dinner at the White House that night.
They will join US Vice-President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a lunch on Thursday that will include discussions about maritime cooperation and pandemic recovery. Biden will also meet with each of the Southeast Asian leaders.
In his remarks on Wednesday, Campbell said he expected the two days of conversations to be “direct, polite, but a little bit uncomfortable at times”. He said China, the mainland’s relations with Taiwan, Myanmar and how the war in Ukraine might affect the Indo-Pacific region would be among the topics, along with climate, trade and infrastructure.
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“What we want to underscore more than anything else is that … we are not seeking to take provocative actions,” he said when asked how cross-Strait relations would be discussed. “We believe it’s critical for other countries to both publicly and privately underscore what is taking place in Ukraine must never happen in Asia.”
Campbell said some Asean countries would probably sign on to the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which Biden introduced in October to encourage cooperation in areas including trade, the supply chain, infrastructure, decarbonisation and anticorruption efforts.
On Myanmar, Campbell said: “We believe Asean has a critical role to play” in encourage greater diplomacy with the country, which is under military rule after a coup last year.
“We hope and expect Asean to take real initiatives in terms of how to engage both the current government and opposition about the way forward in a tragic and incredibly difficult circumstances,” he said.
Myanmar’s military leader, Min Aung Hlaing, was reportedly not invited to the summit.
While noting that the summit was to engage Asean as an institution, Campbell said relations with the Philippines had “rebounded” during the late stages of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration, adding that Washington would like to continue the progress under Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, the presumptive president-elect.
The Philippines’ foreign affairs secretary, Teodoro Locsin Jnr, will represent the country at the summit instead of Duterte, according to a government statement.
Campbell also said the US was keen on reviving educational programmes in the Philippines, such as teaching English as a second language, which had faded since being introduced decades ago.
During the Asean-US meeting that was held virtually in October, Biden announced US$102 million in initiatives to aid Covid-19 recovery, address climate change, stimulate economic growth and promote gender equality.
