NDTV News:
ASEAN foreign ministers gathered in Indonesia on Tuesday for talks dominated by the crisis in Myanmar, with the regional bloc divided over how or whether to reengage with the coup-wracked country’s ruling junta.
The two-day Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting will be followed by talks later in the week with Beijing, Washington and other powers where top US diplomat Antony Blinken will seek to push back on China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea.
Myanmar has been ravaged by deadly violence since a military coup deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government more than two years ago and unleashed a bloody crackdown on dissent.
ASEAN has long been decried as a toothless talking shop, and it remains split over diplomatic attempts to resolve the crisis.
Those fractures were laid bare in a draft joint communique seen by AFP, where a section on Myanmar was left blank as ASEAN members failed to agree on a unified position beforehand.
“The para is still being discussed… member countries are still taking time to propose their submission,” a Southeast Asian diplomat told AFP.
The only time ASEAN has failed to issue a joint communique was over a decade ago in 2012 due to a language dispute about the South China Sea.
ASEAN members were making “extra efforts” in the days before the meeting — a prelude to a leaders’ summit in September — to unite the group around the Myanmar issue, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
However the official was “not too optimistic” that would happen given that a “few members have different perspectives on how to approach the problem”, they said.
Myanmar remains an ASEAN member but has been barred from high-level meetings over the junta’s failure to implement a five-point plan, agreed two years ago, to end the violence and restart negotiations to resolve the crisis.
But ASEAN efforts to kick-start the plan’s execution have been fruitless, as the junta ignores international criticism and refuses to engage with its opponents.
Thailand, meanwhile, hosted the junta’s foreign minister for controversial “informal talks” last month, deepening the divisions between ASEAN members.
Cambodia sent a junior diplomat while ASEAN chair Indonesia and Malaysia snubbed the meeting.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi appeared to take aim at divisions within the bloc in remarks opening a session on the first day of talks.
“Our differences should not be an excuse for us to abandon pressing human rights issues in our own region. Despite complexities on the ground, ASEAN must not waver,” she said.
