Blinken vows unity with SE Asia against ‘coercion’
Jakarta: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met China’s top diplomat on Friday to discuss thorny issues as part of efforts to nurture talks on the sidelines of regional diplomatic meetings in Indonesia, whose president called on rival powers to avoid turning the region into a “competition arena”.
Blinken stressed the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and raised concerns by Washington and its allies over China’s actions in his late-Thursday meeting with Wang Yi, who heads the ruling Communist Party’s Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, US officials said.
“The meeting was part of ongoing efforts to maintain open channels of communication to clarify US interests across a wide range of issues and to responsibly manage competition by reducing the risk of misperception and miscalculation,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.
“This is what the world expects of the United States and the PRC,” Miller said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Blinken made a two-day trip to Beijing last month to meet Chinese leaders and restore top-level ties in a visit he said then was meant to “address misperceptions, miscalculations and to ensure that competition doesn’t veer into conflict”.
But Washington and Beijing remain deeply suspicious of each other’s actions and intentions.
Blinken used the meeting with Wang in Jakarta “to advance US interests and values, to directly raise concerns shared by the United States and allies and partners regarding PRC actions”, Miller said.
“He made clear that the United States, together with our allies and partners, will advance our vision for a free, open, and rules-based international order.”
US officials informed some allies in the region of Blinken’s meeting with Wang Yi ahead of their talks in Jakarta with an assurance that Washington would not waver on its commitment to fight for the rule of law and against coercive actions in the region, a senior Southeast Asian diplomat told The Associated Press.
The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of a lack of authority to discuss the issue publicly.
Blinken and Wang, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, were attending the Jakarta meetings with counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a 10-nation regional bloc that is often pinned between competing interests of the two leading world powers over a range of issues, including tensions over Taiwan and the long-seething territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
The three, along with other Western and Asian foreign ministers whose countries regularly engage with ASEAN, paid a call on Friday to Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who delivered a pointed message.
“Your presence at the ASEAN foreign ministerial meetings and post-ministerial conference is to find solutions to regional problems, to world problems, not the other way around, let alone exacerbate problems,” Widodo said.
