MANILA (The Thursday Times) — Southeast Asian leaders open their annual summit in Manila on Sunday with the war in Myanmar, the South China Sea, and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine on the agenda, while US President Donald Trump is due to fly in on Tuesday for the closing round of talks.
The 49th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its related meetings with Asian and Western partners run from November 15 to 17 at the Philippine International Convention Center on Manila Bay. The Philippines holds the bloc’s rotating chair this year and will hand it to Singapore at the close.
ASEAN foreign ministers held pre-summit talks on Saturday, hosted by Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro, who briefed them on her recent trip to Myanmar. Leaders from beyond the region began arriving the same day, among them Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva.
Trump’s night in Manila
Trump will land on Tuesday afternoon with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after the main ASEAN meetings have ended, according to Philippine officials. He is expected to join three meetings that evening, including a special ASEAN-US summit and a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the grouping of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India.
China will be represented by Premier Li Qiang, who is due to meet ASEAN leaders on Monday and leave before Trump arrives, the officials said. Reports say Washington will use the visit to press Southeast Asian governments to join its “Pax Silica” technology supply-chain initiative.
The trip comes days before Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin are due to meet in Shenzhen, a three-way summit announced by the White House.
No breakthroughs expected
Drafts of the post-summit statements that have circulated ahead of the meetings point to no breakthroughs. They call for the peaceful resolution of disputes and for “freedom of navigation and overflight” at sea, and restate members’ commitment to international law and the UN Charter.
On Myanmar, the drafts urge “all parties to commit to an immediate cessation of violence, safe and unhindered humanitarian access, inclusive dialogue with all stakeholders and the unconditional release of all those unjustly detained”. Myanmar’s military leader and foreign minister remain barred from the bloc’s summits because the country has not complied with the five-point peace plan ASEAN agreed in 2021.
Southeast Asian diplomats say talks with China on a code of conduct for the South China Sea, under negotiation for more than two decades, have made substantial progress but will not be concluded this year. China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam hold overlapping claims in the waters, and negotiations are set to resume next year.
ASEAN, founded in 1967, now has 11 members, and has held together a mix of democracies and authoritarian states largely through its policy of not interfering in members’ domestic affairs.
