By Kate Lamb and Stanley Widianto
JAKARTA (Reuters) -Foreign ministers of two dozen countries met in Indonesia on Friday with U.S.-China rivalry, the war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles set to dominate talks at Southeast Asia’s annual security gathering.
Top diplomats from China, the United States and Russia were among those joining Friday’s ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), where broad-based agendas are typically hijacked by geopolitical flare-ups, offering a theatre for fierce rebukes, superpower squabbles and occasional walk-outs.
In opening remarks, host Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s foreign minister and chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said the forum should “move to the next stage of preventive diplomacy”.
“Sharpening rivalry continues to divide the region. Our region also hosts numerous potential flashpoints. This challenge is becoming more complicated,” she said.
“This complexity requires us to better manage potential conflict. We have to utilise the ARF as a vehicle to aggressively wage peace, preventing any potential conflict from arising in the region.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a meeting with ASEAN and in remarks afterwards called for peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific, the Taiwan Strait and Ukraine. He also d chided North Korea for its launch this week of its latest intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-18.
“We need to work together to end North Korea’s unlawful weapons of mass destruction programme and ballistic missile launches – yet another one just this week – which threatened the region and global non-proliferation regime,” he said.
Blinken on Thursday held what the State Department called “candid and constructive” talks with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, the latest in a series of interactions it said were aimed at managing differences between the two big powers.
Wang had told Blinken “a rational and pragmatic attitude” was key to getting their relations on the right track.
U.S.-China sparring marred last year’s ARF, which came a few days after then U.S. house speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, enraging Beijing, which launched live-fire drills around the self-ruled island and cut off several channels of dialogue with Washington.
On Thursday, Chinese fighter jets monitored a U.S. Navy patrol plane that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, as China carried out military exercises south of the island, which it claims.
NO LAVROV PLAN TO CONTACT U.S.
The closed-doors ARF brings together the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan, Britain, India, South Korea, China, the United States and more.
Among them was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who confirmed he had no plan to contact U.S. officials in Jakarta, according to his spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova.
China’s Wang met Lavrov and said the two sides would “strengthen strategic communication and coordination”.
Lavrov gave an interview this week saying the war in Ukraine would not end until the West “gives up its plans to preserve its domination”, including its “obsessive desire” to defeat Russia strategically.
On Friday, Blinken called for a “just and lasting peace to Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine”.
Western nations at the forum are expected to condemn Myanmar’s ruling military for its alleged atrocities against the civilian population, as the junta cracks down on its opponents and deploys fighter jets and heavy artillery to flush out pro-democracy fighters.
ASEAN member Myanmar has been barred from the bloc’s meetings over the junta’s failure to honour a two-year-old deal with the grouping to end hostilities and start dialogue, which has tested ASEAN’s unity.
The bloc late on Thursday “strongly condemned the continued acts of violence, including air strikes, artillery shelling, and destruction of public facilities” in a communique issued more than 30 hours after foreign ministers concluded their meeting, a delay that has in previous years indicated discord.
(Writing by Martin Petty; editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel)
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