JAKARTA
\nForeign ministers of two dozen countries met in Indonesia on Friday with the U.S.-China rivalry, the war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles dominating talks at Southeast Asia\u2019s annual security-focused gathering.
\nTop diplomats from China, the United States and Russia were among those in Jakarta for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), where broad-based agendas are typically hijacked by geopolitical flare-ups, offering a theatre for fierce rebukes, superpower squabbles and occasional walk-outs.
\nUnited States Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged stability in the Indo-Pacific, the Taiwan Strait and Ukraine, adding there was \u201cno greater challenge\u201d to regional security than North Korea\u2019s \u201cprovocative\u201d missile launches.
\n\u201cWe need to work together to end North Korea\u2019s unlawful weapons of mass destruction programme and ballistic missile launches,\u201d he said.
\nBlinken on Thursday held what the State Department called \u201ccandid and constructive\u201d talks with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, the latest in a series of interactions it said were aimed at managing differences between the two big powers.
\nWang had told Blinken \u201ca rational and pragmatic attitude\u201d was key to getting their relations on the right track.
\nU.S.-China sparring marred last year\u2019s ARF, which came a few days after then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, enraging Beijing, which launched live-fire drills around the self-ruled island and cut off several channels of dialogue with Washington.
\nOn Thursday, Chinese fighter jets monitored a U.S. Navy patrol plane that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, as China carried out military exercises south of the island, which it claims.
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\nSeparately, the European Union\u2019s foreign policy chief said after the ARF concluded that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had \u201caggressively\u201d rejected a call to withdraw troops from Ukraine.
\n\u201cLavrov responded… very aggressively and explained his point of view and said that everything is a Western conspiracy,\u201d said Josep Borrell.
\nLavrov said earlier this week the war in Ukraine would not end until the West \u201cgives up its plans to preserve its domination\u201d, including its \u201cobsessive desire\u201d to defeat Russia strategically.
\nRussia says its invasion of Ukraine, which has lasted more than a year and a half, is a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d.
\nLavrov had no plans to contact U.S. counterparts while in Jakarta, according to his spokesperson, Maria Zakharova.
\nHe did meet China\u2019s Wang Yi, however, and the two sides would \u201cstrengthen strategic communication and coordination\u201d, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
\nSharpening rivalry
\nThe closed-doors ARF brings together the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan, Britain, India, South Korea, China, the United States and more.
\nThe foreign minister of host Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, said the forum had agreed to \u201cstrengthen preventive diplomacy\u201d.
\n\u201cSharpening rivalry continues to divide the region. Our region also hosts numerous potential flashpoints. This challenge is becoming more complicated,\u201d she said.
\nASEAN is struggling to de-escalate a bloody crisis in its member state Myanmar, whose ruling military was roundly condemned at Friday\u2019s forum for its alleged atrocities against the civilian population.
\nMyanmar has seen escalating violence since the military seized power in a 2021 coup and unleashed a lethal crackdown on opponents, including deploying fighter jets and heavy artillery to flush out pro-democracy fighters.
\nMyanmar\u2019s generals have been barred from the bloc\u2019s meetings over their failure to honour a two-year-old deal with the grouping to end hostilities and start dialogue, which has tested ASEAN\u2019s unity.
\nThe bloc late on Thursday \u201cstrongly condemned the continued acts of violence, including air strikes, artillery shelling, and destruction of public facilities\u201d in a communique issued more than 30 hours after foreign ministers concluded their meeting, a delay that has in previous years indicated discord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JAKARTA Foreign ministers of two dozen countries met in Indonesia on Friday with the U.S.-China rivalry, the war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles dominating talks at Southeast Asia\u2019s annual security-focused gathering. Top diplomats from China, the United States and Russia were among those in Jakarta for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), where broad-based agendas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-343116","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n