Blinken, Southeast Asia Leaders to Meet Virtually Next Week  | Voice of America

WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will virtually meet with Southeast Asian officials every day next week, a senior State Department official said Saturday as Washington tries to show the region it’s a U.S. priority while keeping the crisis in Myanmar is concerned.

The leading US diplomat will attend virtual meetings for five consecutive days, including annual meetings of the 10 foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other nations, as well as separate meetings of the countries of the lower Mekong sub-region of Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.

“I think it is clear evidence of our commitment to the region,” said the official, who informed Reuters on condition of anonymity.

In recent years, senior US officials have not always attended ASEAN meetings and have sometimes sent more junior officials to the region’s summits.

The virtual meetings come after the Biden government paid little attention in its early days to the region of more than 600 million people, often overshadowed by neighboring economic giant China, which the government sees as its biggest foreign policy challenge.

But that has been addressed in part by recent visits to the region. Assistant Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand in May and June, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was in Vietnam and the Philippines this week, and Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Singapore and Vietnam.

“This steady flow of high-level engagements will pay off. It is noticed, “the official said, adding that countries in the region” notice if we don’t show up and then you hear some complain about not taking them seriously or taking them for granted. “

‘Game changer’

The official said donating COVID-19 vaccines to the area was a “game changer in terms of how our image is perceived”.

On Sunday, the United States shipped 3 million doses of the Moderna-COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam and also sent doses to other Southeast Asian countries, but an agreement it made with Japan, Australia and India in March for a billion doses deliver to the region stalled because of an Indian export ban.

By the middle of the week, the United States will have donated 23 million doses to countries in the region experiencing coronavirus spikes with vaccination rates far below Western countries, the official said.

But none of those cans has gone to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where military generals carried out a coup on February 1 and arrested elected leaders like Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking sanctions from Washington and other western capitals.

At next week’s meetings, Blinken will be in the same virtual meetings as representatives of the Myanmar military government, but the official said this was an opportunity to convey messages to the military government rather than giving legitimacy to those officials.

“We are not ready to leave ASEAN because of the bad behavior of a group of generals in Burma,” the official said, adding that US officials are also working with the National Unity Government, which opposes the military government there.