The “ASEAN” meetings are an arena of competition between Washington, Beijing and Moscow

The meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), hosted by the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, witnessed intense activity by the United States, China and Russia, each seeking to strengthen its political and economic relations with the ASEAN countries. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, and chief Chinese diplomat Wang Yi attended the ASEAN Group meetings, yesterday, Friday, in Jakarta, and discussions centered on security issues and escalating geopolitical tensions in the region, according to Bloomberg. Although they attended the meeting together, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that Lavrov had no plans to have contacts with US officials during his current visit to Indonesia. This is the first time that the two ministers have been in the same room, since last March, when they attended the “G20” foreign ministers’ meeting in New Delhi. Although they did not meet officially, they spoke for a short period of no more than 10 minutes. The ASEAN group includes Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines and Myanmar. This year’s meetings are also attended by Japan and South Korea. The member states of “ASEAN” are seeking to calm tensions between the two most important partners of the organization, the United States and China, while the group continues to pressure countries such as Russia to refrain from using nuclear weapons, in light of the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to what was reported by “Bloomberg”. Indonesian President Joko Widodo called on delegates from ASEAN countries to work to solve critical problems in the region and not to exacerbate them, stressing the importance of ASEAN remaining a place of cooperation and understanding, rather than turning into an arena of competition or being an agent of any country. He stressed that “dialogue and cooperation play a decisive role in resolving these problems and achieving stability and peace.”