S China Sea, Myanmar top ASEAN meeting agenda

LUANG PRABANG, Jan 29 (AP/AFP): China's growingly assertive posture in the South China Sea and escalating violence in Myanmar topped the agenda for Southeast Asian diplomats meeting in Laos on Monday.

The gathering is the first high-level meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since Laos took over the rotating chairmanship.

The diplomats for the 10 nations with a combined population of nearly 650 million and GDP of more than $3 trillion will work to strategize on issues of regional peace, security and stability. They were also discussing economic cooperation and other issues under the year's theme "enhancing connectivity and resilience."

Of the ASEAN member nations, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos, several have competing maritime claims in the South China Sea with China.

A senior Myanmar official met ASEAN foreign ministers in Laos on Monday, the junta-ruled country's first representative to attend a high-level meeting of the regional bloc in more than two years.

The Myanmar military seized power in a coup in February 2021, and in October that year the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) barred junta leaders from its summits and ministerial meetings, inviting the country to send "non-political" representatives instead.

Up to now Myanmar has refused, but Marlar Than Htike, a senior foreign ministry bureaucrat, is attending a foreign ministers' "retreat" in Luang Prabang, Laos.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated $5 trillion in international trade passes each year, which has led it into direct confrontations, most notably with the Philippines and Vietnam.

The ASEAN meeting in the historic city of Luang Prabang comes on the same day that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, was to be meeting with top officials in Hanoi, among other things to discuss the ongoing tensions in the South China Sea.

The Philippines has been looking for more support from its ASEAN neighbors, amid increasingly tense hostilities with China, primarily off of the Second Thomas Shoal, which many worry could escalate into a broader armed conflict that could involve Washington, Manila's longtime treaty ally.

The Philippine government protested the Chinese coast guard's use of water cannon, a military-grade laser and dangerous blocking maneuvers that had caused minor collisions off the Philippine-occupied shoal.

China and ASEAN agreed in 2012 to a declaration on conduct in the South China Sea, seeking to "enhance favorable conditions for a peaceful and durable solution of differences and disputes," but there has been little sign of adherence to that in recent years.

Under last year's chair, Indonesia, ASEAN agreed with China on guidelines to accelerate negotiations for a South China Sea code of conduct, but that has yet to produce results.

With communist Laos' close ties with neighboring China, and the fact that it is landlocked so has no South China Sea claims of its own, many have been skeptical that it will be able to achieve any breakthrough during its year as ASEAN chair.

A draft copy of Laos' final statement to be issued later Monday, obtained by The Associated Press, makes no direct mention of China's claims, but does stress several times the need to respect the United Nations convention on the law of the sea.