Myanmar’s foreign minister yesterday met with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the first time in five years, in an effort to revive a regional peace initiative intended to resolve the country’s civil war.
At a summit in May, the 11-nation bloc agreed to an informal meeting with Tin Maung Swe, the foreign minister of Myanmar’s new military-backed civilian government, which took office in April. Since then, the new government has launched a campaign to normalize its relationships with its major neighbors, including ASEAN.
The bloc has excluded Myanmar from the bloc’s summits since late 2021, due to its lack of implementation of the Five-Point Consensus, ASEAN’s roadmap for the management of the country’s conflict. The Consensus, which was agreed at a special ASEAN meeting in April 2021, calls for an immediate cessation of violence and inclusive dialogue involving “all parties” to the conflict.
Yesterday’s meeting involved both an informal meeting between Tin Maung Swe and his ASEAN counterparts, the first to take place since the 2021 coup, and a second session involving just the latter. The meeting was attended by foreign ministers from every member state except Cambodia and Malaysia, which was represented by Foreign Ministry Secretary-General Tan Sri Amran Mohamed Zin.
