ASEAN envoy to engage all Myanmar stakeholders at Manila summit

Maria Theresa Lazaro, the ASEAN Special Envoy for Myanmar, will continue to engage with all stakeholders, including armed resistance groups in military-ruled Myanmar, ahead of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting next week, the Philippines said on July 16. The Philippines, which will chair ASEAN in 2026, expects US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as well as foreign ministers from Japan, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom to attend the Manila summit. The Myanmar issue is expected to be one of the main topics at the summit, and the ASEAN Code of Conduct (COC) plan for the South China Sea is also expected to be discussed against the backdrop of regional political tensions in the Asia-Pacific and the impact of the Iran war on global trade and markets. Last weekend, ASEAN foreign ministers met informally in Bangkok with the foreign minister appointed by the Myanmar military government. This was the first face-to-face meeting and discussion since ASEAN banned Myanmar leaders from attending ASEAN meetings following the 2021 military coup. Maria Theresa Lazaro has also met with resistance groups, representatives of the National Unity Government (NUG), and other stakeholders, and the outcomes of these discussions will be reported to ASEAN ministers at next week's meeting. Dominic Zevie Imperial, spokesperson for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, said Lazaro's engagement with Myanmar's armed groups was open and constructive, and commented that these discussions would be important for any dialogue regarding Myanmar's future. "We are not limiting these engagements to just a few groups, but are actually openly inviting everyone to engage with us," he said. Ref; ASEAN envoy to engage all Myanmar stakeholders at Manila summit The post မနီလာထိပ်သီးဆွေးနွေးပွဲမှာ မြန်မာသက်ဆိုင်သူအားလုံးနဲ့ အာဆီယံ အထူးသံတမန် ဆွေးနွေးမယ် appeared first on Ayeyarwaddy Times.