Vientiane: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Laos on Thursday for the East Asia Summit, where he will push a firm line on Myanmar\u2019s junta and Beijing\u2019s assertive actions in the South China Sea.
\nIn a shift of focus after exhaustive diplomacy on the Middle East crisis, the top US diplomat landed in Vientiane where he will represent the United States at the annual Southeast Asian-led meetings, which President Joe Biden is skipping for the second straight year.
\nThe summit will bring Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the same room, but no talks between the two are expected, with the Biden administration believing Moscow is insincere in its calls for peace talks on Ukraine.
\nMyanmar is sending a representative to a top-level gathering of the ASEAN bloc for the first time in more than three years, as diplomats push to kickstart diplomacy with the military junta.
\nDaniel Kritenbrink, the top US diplomat for East Asia, said ahead of the summit that the United States supported ASEAN\u2019s efforts but would advocate sustained pressure on the military regime.
\n\u201cUnfortunately, we have seen virtually zero progress\u201d from the junta on priorities such as freeing political prisoners and reducing violence with ethnic fighters, he said.
\nBlinken, who met two weeks ago with his Chinese counterpart in New York, will also back efforts by Southeast Asia to raise concerns with Beijing about its increasingly assertive claims in the South China Sea.
\nWhile the Middle East is not expected to dominate discussions in Laos, Blinken will meet later Thursday with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who has been vocally critical of US support for Israel.
\nUS officials privately say they understand the political pressure in the Muslim-majority country and that they seek a cooperative relationship with Anwar, who enjoyed strong advocacy from Washington when he was controversially imprisoned.
\nBlinken will also meet Thursday with new Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra of Thailand, the oldest US ally in Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vientiane: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Laos on Thursday for the East Asia Summit, where he will push a firm line on Myanmar\u2019s junta and Beijing\u2019s assertive actions in the South China Sea. In a shift of focus after exhaustive diplomacy on the Middle East crisis, the top US diplomat landed in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71414,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71402\/revisions\/71414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}