By Christine Tjandraningsih and Puy Kea,
Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed Tuesday for the Philippines to become the rotating chair of the regional body in 2026 instead of Myanmar, after assessing that the junta has made "no significant progress" in implementing a peace plan struck two years ago.
The agreement was reached during a leaders' retreat, after the leaders found that implementation of the so-called five-point consensus has not made any headway, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters.
The consensus was reached between Myanmar and the other countries in the grouping in April 2021, which is aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the Myanmar conflict.
The retreat is part of a series of summits among ASEAN member states and with their dialogue partners that will last until Thursday.
Military-ruled Myanmar is not taking part in the summits as Indonesia, the host country and chair of the 10-member group this year, has maintained ASEAN's position of only allowing it to send a nonpolitical representative.
Retno said the leaders also decided to set up a troika made up of the current, previous and next chairs of ASEAN to ensure that efforts will continue to deal with the Myanmar crisis which they believe will unlikely be resolved in a year. ASEAN will also retain the post of special envoy of the ASEAN chair on Myanmar, she added.
While ASEAN efforts regarding Myanmar have failed to bear fruit, its ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai held a meeting at a prison in the capital Naypyitaw on July 9, the first confirmed contact between her and a high-ranking foreign government official since the February 2021 coup.
The lack of advance coordination between the Thai foreign minister and Indonesia led to questions and concerns raised by some member countries regarding the move. But ASEAN foreign ministers later said a number of the member states viewed the meeting with Suu Kyi favorably.
Earlier Tuesday, in an apparent reference to U.S-China rivalry, Indonesian President Joko Widodo told ASEAN leaders that Southeast Asia should take a neutral stand, saying ASEAN "has agreed not to be proxy for any powers, and to cooperate with anyone for peace and prosperity."
"Don't make our ship, ASEAN, an arena of rivalries in which (countries) destroy each other" but make it a field to grow cooperation, said the president, popularly known as Jokowi.
The United States is sending Vice President Kamala Harris instead of President Joe Biden to the series of ASEAN-sponsored summits with partner nations to be held Wednesday and Thursday. China will be represented by Premier Li Qiang, India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Japan by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Russia by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The grouping and China have been drafting a code of conduct to prevent confrontations in the region, given that ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei have overlapping territorial claims with China and Taiwan.
Tensions between China and some ASEAN members have increased since the recent release by Beijing of a map laying claim to Malaysian and other maritime areas in Southeast Asia.
Malaysia said it had filed a diplomatic protest over the map. The Philippines also lodged a protest, saying a line drawn on the map showing nearly all of the South China Sea as part of China had been invalidated by a 2016 ruling by a Netherlands-based international tribunal.
According to a draft of a statement to be issued following the ASEAN-China summit slated for Wednesday, the ASEAN leaders might voice concern over activities that have caused tensions in the waters, including land reclamation.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Its chairmanship rotates annually based on the alphabetical order of the English names its members.
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