Japan's foreign minister will miss a regional security conference being held this week in Vientiane, although a lower ranking official will attend in his place, officials said yesterday.
Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura left Japan on Sunday for three days of talks in London with Western leaders on Tokyo's bid to gain a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
The Japanese delegation in Laos will instead be headed by Ichiro Aisawa, a senior vice minister for foreign affairs, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said.
PHOTO: AP
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also is not attending the six-day ministers conference through Friday of 10 ASEAN countries and 14 partners, including the US, EU, Russia, Japan, China and India.
Laotian Deputy Foreign Minister Bounkeut Sangsomsak said the absence of Rice and Machimura wasn't expected to significantly detract from the conclave, the region's most important security forum.
"I think we can understand that because they have some commitments with other countries," Bounkeut said.
But the absence of top representation for two of the world's biggest economic powers offers both China and India an opportunity to further enhance their rising influence in the region.
It is the first time since 1982 that the top US diplomat has missed the annual ASEAN ministerial meeting.
Rice's absence was officially explained as a result of a scheduling conflict. Many in the region, however, view it as a US snub of ASEAN for its failure to force Myanmar's military junta to hand over power to a civilian government and to free pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The US and EU have threatened to boycott ASEAN meetings if Myanmar becomes the bloc's chairman as scheduled next year, and Southeast Asian nations fear it could endanger trade ties with the West.
It was unclear why Machimura chose to skip the meetings in Vientiane.
"I guess we have to take this as a reflection of Japan's priorities," said the spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, Marty Natalegawa.
"We continue to believe this is the premier forum for regional interaction," Natalegawa said.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
They are joined in the security-oriented ASEAN Regional Forum by Australia, Canada, China, the EU, India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Korea and the US.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS