ASEAN’s special envoy on Myanmar will keep talking to all stakeholders in the war-torn country, including armed rebel groups, the Philippines said on Thursday as it prepares to host a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers next week.
Manila, this year’s ASEAN chair, is expecting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to attend next week’s summit, along with ministers from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Myanmar is expected to be among the key issues at the talks in the Philippine capital, along with ASEAN’s planned code of conduct for the South China Sea against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific and the disruption to global trade and markets caused by the Iran war.
Last weekend, ASEAN foreign ministers held informal talks with Myanmar’s foreign minister in Bangkok, the first such face-to-face talks since the 2021 coup in Myanmar that led to ASEAN barring the country’s leaders from its meetings.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro, who is ASEAN’s special envoy on Myanmar, also held talks with rebel groups, representatives of the National Unity Government (NUG) and other stakeholders, and will brief her counterparts on the discussions next week.
Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dominic Xavier Imperial said Lazaro’s talks with the armed groups were “candid” and “productive”, noting they would be important in any dialogue on Myanmar’s future.
“We are not limiting these engagements to certain groups, but it’s actually an open invitation to be able to engage with everyone,” he added.
The ASEAN summit comes shortly after the 10th anniversary of a landmark 2016 arbitral ruling that invalidated the legal basis of China’s sweeping South China Sea claims, a decision Beijing rejects.
Imperial said ASEAN and China remained committed to negotiating a “substantive and effective” code of conduct and expressed confidence that progress toward concluding talks could still be achieved this year.
“We see the commitment from all parties to really come up with a substantive and effective COC,” he said.
(Reuters)
