Sawt Falasteen - Russia, China FMs meet as ASEAN talks get underway in Laos

The three-day meeting of the 10-member ASEAN bloc started in the capital Vientiane on Thursday, with the South China Sea and the conflict in Myanmar high on the agenda.

Sergei Lavrov held talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the meeting, Russia's foreign ministry said.

A schedule for Thursday's meeting seen by AFP showed that Lavrov was due to join Wang for a 40-minute "ministerial meeting".

Lavrov left the venue at 7.15 pm local time (1215 GMT), without commenting on what the meeting had covered.

China is a close political and economic ally of Russia and NATO members have branded Beijing a "decisive enabler" of Moscow's war in Ukraine.

Their meeting came a day after Wang held talks in China with Ukraine's top diplomat Dmytro Kuleba.

Lavrov said before an earlier meeting with the foreign ministers of China and Laos that ASEAN was "one of the essential elements of a new, more just multipolar world order".

It must "ensure a stable and secure development, outside the blocs, of the Asia-Pacific region," he said.

The foreign ministers of Canada, India and the United Kingdom arrived in Vientiane on Thursday to attend the talks as dialogue partners, AFP journalists said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also expected to attend.

- 'Almost there' -

ASEAN ministers were thrashing out a common position on the civil war raging in member state Myanmar on Thursday, a Southeast Asian diplomat at the talks said.

"Myanmar is not resolved yet but we're almost there," the source said, requesting anonymity in order to speak to the media.

A draft ASEAN communique seen by AFP said ministers "strongly condemned" the continued violence unleashed by the military's coup in 2021 that has plunged the country into turmoil.

The junta is struggling to crush armed opposition to its coup and has been barred from high-level ASEAN meetings over its crackdown on dissent.

It had previously refused to send "non-political representatives" to attend high-level ASEAN meetings but two senior bureaucrats are representing Myanmar at the talks in Vientiane.

The military's readiness to re-engage diplomatically was a sign of its "weakened position", the diplomatic source told AFP.

An ethnic minority armed group claimed on Thursday its fighters had captured a town and a military regional command in northern Shan state, although the junta denied the claim.

Indonesia's foreign minister slammed on Thursday the junta's unwillingness to engage with a regional peace plan to resolve the crisis sparked by its coup.

Retno Marsudi made the remarks after meeting her Singaporean counterpart on the sidelines of the Vientiane meeting.

Weeks after it seized power, the junta agreed to a five-point peace plan with ASEAN that it has since ignored as it wages a crackdown on dissent and battles armed opposition to its rule.

"We shared the same view on the lack of commitment of Myanmar military junta to implement the 5PC (five point consensus)," Marsudi wrote on social media platform X.

- Flashpoint reefs -

A series of clashes between Philippine and Chinese vessels at flashpoint reefs in the South China Sea in recent months is also on the ASEAN agenda, the diplomatic source said.

Beijing claims the waterway, through which trillions of dollars of trade passes annually, almost in its entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

A Filipino sailor lost a thumb in a June 17 confrontation when Chinese coast guard members wielding knives, sticks and an axe foiled a Philippine Navy attempt to resupply its troops on a remote outpost.

The source said the Philippines was trying to insert a mention of injuries to its people in the joint communique, expected later Thursday.

Blinken is also expected to "discuss the importance of adherence to international law in the South China Sea" when he arrives in Laos, according to the US State Department.

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R.Halabi--SF-PST