Thailand Welcomes U.S. Engagement With Myanmar, Expects ASEAN Summit Talks on the Country's Future
BANGKOK — Thailand welcomes the United States' engagement with Myanmar and expects discussions at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' November summit in Manila on how to proceed with the member barred from the bloc's top meetings since the 2021 coup, Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told Reuters on Friday, October 23.
The United States and Myanmar's military-backed government held talks in Tokyo two weeks ago, their second meeting in a month, as Washington steps up re-engagement with the generals it shunned after the coup. "We don't want to see Myanmar isolated, we don't want Myanmar to be an arena for geopolitical rivalry … so the US engagement is something that we welcome," said Sihasak, who is also Thailand's deputy prime minister. Engagement "does not mean legitimizing the regime," he added, but aims to encourage peaceful conflict resolution and reconciliation with the opposition.
He said there was "some shift in ASEAN's position," citing Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing's recent visits to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia — GSM reported the Malaysia visit on October 7 — but said it was unclear whether the Manila summit would address restoring Myanmar's full representation. "It's good that we're going to have a very substantive, very extensive, and very in-depth discussion on how to proceed on Myanmar," he said.
Sihasak also said Thailand and Cambodia could resolve their longstanding land and maritime boundary disputes within 12 to 18 months despite limited progress, cautioning that confidence-building and the security concerns along the land border, where clashes have occurred, must come first. Cambodia launched a conciliation process under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in June, after Thailand terminated a 2001 joint development framework in May following deadly border clashes; the first meeting was held about a month ago. "Right now, we haven't achieved, to be very frank, much progress," he said. The maritime dispute centers on overlapping claims to about 26,000 square kilometers in the Gulf of Thailand, believed to hold oil and gas reserves worth around $300 billion; Thailand wants the boundary defined before discussing resource-sharing, he said. Thailand-EU free-trade talks are in their final stage and could conclude by year-end if there is mutual political will, he added.
(GSM, from Reuters' October 23 interview with Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow)
Source: GSM · USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：泰国外长 Sihasak Phuangketkeow。奥地利联邦欧洲与国际事务部，CC BY 4.0。 / Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow. Photo: Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, CC BY 4.0.
