WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Malaysia later this week to attend a meeting of Southeast Asian Nations in his first visit to the Indo-Pacific region as America\u2019s top diplomat, the State Department said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Rubio will travel July 8-12 and will take part in meetings in Kuala Lumpur with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, whose ministers are gathering there, the State Department said.<\/p>\n
Rubio will seek to firm up US relationships with partners and allies in the region, who have been unnerved by President Donald Trump\u2019s global tariff offensive.<\/p>\n
The trip is part of a renewed US focus on the Indo-Pacific and represents an effort by the Trump administration to look beyond the conflicts in the Middle East and Europe that have so far consumed much of its attention.<\/p>\n
Last week, Rubio hosted counterparts from Australia, India and Japan and announced a joint initiative to ensure supply of critical minerals, a vital sector for high-tech applications dominated by Washington\u2019s main strategic rival China.<\/p>\n
Trump also announced he reached a trade agreement with important Southeast Asian partner and ASEAN member Vietnam and could reach one with India, but cast doubt on a possible deal with Japan, Washington\u2019s main Indo-Pacific ally and a major importer and investor in the United States.<\/p>\n
Rubio has yet to visit Japan, or neighboring South Korea, the other major US ally in Northeast Asia, since taking office in January, even though Washington sees the Indo-Pacific as its main strategic priority given the perceived threat posed by China.<\/p>\n
ASEAN countries have been nervous about Trump\u2019s tariff offensive and have questioned the willingness of his \u201cAmerica First\u201d administration to fully engage diplomatically and economically with the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a hunger to be reassured that the US actually views the Indo-Pacific as the primary theater of US interests, key to US national security,\u201d said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at Washington\u2019s Center for Strategic and International Studies.<\/p>\n
Other ASEAN countries may be encouraged by Vietnam\u2019s deal with Trump. \u201cThis should smooth the way for continued pragmatic security engagement between the US and Vietnam, and hopefully provide a pathway for others in Southeast Asia to get similar deals without having to give up much,\u201d Poling said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will visit Malaysia later this week to attend a meeting of Southeast Asian Nations in his first visit to the Indo-Pacific region as America\u2019s top diplomat, the State Department said in a statement. Rubio will travel July 8-12 and will take part in meetings in Kuala Lumpur with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":83420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83408","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\/83408","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=83408"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83423,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83408\/revisions\/83423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}