This proposed free-trade agreement between the 10 Asean nations and six other countries, including China, is often viewed as an alternative to the Trans-Pacific Partnership championed by the Obama administration, which excludes China.
Advertisement
Obama noted that China has been run during his lifetime by a communist party that has been much more anti-Western in the past.
“Obama’s diplomatic visit to Vientiane certainly isn’t the time, nor the place, to find value or fault in anything the United States of America did in Laos”, said James “Mule” Parker in an interview.
In some cases, most notably those of Burma and Laos, Obama has been instrumental in “flipping” once-closed and China-dependent countries to closer ties with the USA and the rest of the world, many Asia experts say.
Obama later said he asked his staff to determine if meeting with Duterte would still be productive.
Asean leaders will hold separate and several meetings with their counterparts from these countries. “It’s a highly corrupt country, where national resources are being sold off to unscrupulous investors just to line relevant government officials’ pockets”, Mr. Robertson, based in Bangkok, said in an interview last week.
Laos holds the rotating ASEAN chairmanship this year.
The U.S. bombed Laos heavily during the Vietnam War – eviscerating villages, schools, and temples; killing tens of thousands of civilians and creating hundreds of thousands of refugees.
An estimated 80 million of the baseball-sized cluster bombs -nearly a third of those dropped – failed to detonate.
Peachey said his organization is hoping for a $25 million annual commitment from the US for 10 years. During his visit on Monday, Obama is expected to promise more funding for the USA -backed effort.
From the Philippines to Vietnam, Malaysia and Laos, Mr. Obama has strengthened U.S. ties with the smaller countries in the region that are feeling the pressure of Beijing’s rise as an economic and military great power.
“We went through a period over the course of 20 years, in the ’90s and on through maybe the onset of my presidency, where, because state-sponsored capitalism and an export-driven model was very successful, China was less interested in making waves”, Obama said.
The draft, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, is being fine-tuned by officials for the leaders to approve ahead of the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that begins Tuesday in the Laotian capital.
A rising China, which has been worrying its neighbours with its aggressive behaviour including over the South China Sea, needs to restrain itself in order to play a responsible role at the world stage, US President Barack Obama has said.
“It is clear that a Chinese presence will continue to be felt in Laos and across Southeast Asia”, he said.
Mustafa Izzuddin, a researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, said “economic diplomacy, interdependence and integration will also feature prominently in the summit meetings”.
Advertisement
China is already a major investor in Laos, with several large-scale projects in the works that range from special economic development zones at border areas to a $7 billion railway that is scheduled to link Vientiane with Kunming in southwestern China by 2020. The group has now expanded to include Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. One high-profile case is the disappearance of Sombath Somphone, a well-known land rights organizer who was stopped at a police checkpoint in Vientiane in December 2012 and hasn’t been seen since.
