The delayed summit of Southeast Asian nations due in late February in Thailand may be rescheduled as some leaders are unable to make it, Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said in remarks published yesterday.
“I thought we had settled it in Jakarta a few days ago, but now I’m told that there are some leaders who can’t make it,” Yeo was quoted as saying in Singapore weekly the Sunday Times.
He did not mention the leaders who are not able to attend the ASEAN summit from Feb. 24 to Feb. 26 in Bangkok but said alternative dates being considered include late next month or early February.
Thailand, which currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the 10-member bloc, said last week it would host the summit at the Government House.
The ASEAN meeting was delayed from the middle of this month amid political turmoil in Thailand, where crowds occupied the capital’s airports in a protest against the ruling party loyal to ousted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The protests ended when a court stripped Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat of his position and disbanded the pro-Thaksin People Power Party in a vote fraud case.
Thailand was forced to delay the ASEAN meeting until March because of the blockade of Bangkok’s airports that left 350,000 travelers stranded.
The ASEAN summit will also involve the group’s dialogue partners, including China, South Korea, Japan and India, as well as the UN secretary general and chiefs of other international organizations.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
RSS