By Mikhail Flores and Michael Martina
MANILA, July 23 (Reuters) – Top diplomats from Asia, Europe and North America met on Thursday for the security-focused ASEAN Regional Forum, where ministers were expected to call for a peaceful settlement of renewed and intensifying hostilities in the Middle East.
The war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz are set to dominate the Manila meetings attended by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and top officials from Australia, Britain, China, the European Union, India, Japan and others.
The conflict is a key concern for the 11-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has a combined gross domestic product of about $3.8 trillion heavily reliant on Middle East oil, exposing it to fallout that has stoked global inflation.
“We convene against the backdrop of profound geopolitical and geoeconomic uncertainty,” Maria Theresa Lazaro, the foreign secretary of the Philippines, which is chairing the grouping, said in opening remarks.
“These issues transcend borders and underscore the reality that no nation can address today’s complex security environment alone.”
The U.S. military completed a 12th successive night of attacks on Iran on Wednesday, with Iranian-aligned Houthis claiming hits the following day on two Saudi oil tankers, in a blockade that threatens a second chokehold on global oil supplies in the Red Sea, alongside the Strait of Hormuz.
The world has entered a “new period of turbulence and transformation”, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Hua Chunying told a meeting of officials from ASEAN, China, Japan and South Korea on Thursday, warning of an urgent need for peace and stability.
A day earlier Rubio said the United States wanted a diplomatic solution in the Middle East, but Tehran was not playing ball.
RUBIO, LAVROV DISCUSS UKRAINE WAR
Rubio held talks with Lavrov on Thursday for just under an hour, ranging over the Ukraine war and normalisation of U.S.-Russia ties, Russia’s foreign ministry said.
Lavrov “reaffirmed Russia’s readiness for a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict,” it said, and told Rubio that Moscow remained committed to proposals put forward by the leaders of both nations.
In a one-paragraph statement, the U.S. State Department said bilateral relations and “the need to end the Russia-Ukraine war” figured in the discussions.
Another focal point of talks in Manila has been the South China Sea and long-running tension between Beijing and U.S. ally the Philippines, which Washington is treaty-bound to defend in the event of an attack on its vessels.
China’s coast guard, deployed widely for years far from its mainland, engaged in a brief altercation with Philippine navy personnel on Monday near a disputed reef in Manila’s exclusive economic zone, prompting the countries to summon each other’s ambassadors.
‘INFRINGING AND PROVOCATIVE ACTIONS’
In a second incident on Thursday, China’s coast guard accused the Philippines of “provocative actions” and said it had thwarted an intrusion at another disputed feature, the Scarborough Shoal.
The strategic atoll, long held by Beijing, falls within Manila’s EEZ and is the South China Sea’s most contested site.
The Philippine coast guard said water cannon was used on a government fisheries vessel that engaged in a “purely humanitarian undertaking”.
Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea overlapping parts of the EEZs of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
China does not recognise a 2016 arbitration ruling that those claims had no basis in international law.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi did not attend Thursday’s forum in Manila and was due to join a regional meeting in Kyrgyzstan.
He told ASEAN counterparts on Wednesday the South China Sea was “our common home”, where peace and stability rested in the hands of all.
Regional countries should “resist the incitement of foreign forces, oppose individual countries using the sea to make trouble,” an official statement quoted him as saying.
On Thursday, a day after Wang and Rubio held talks in Manila on a range of issues, including Taiwan, Beijing began two days of live-fire drills in some parts of the Taiwan Strait near the shores of its southeastern province of Fujian.
They follow war games in December that were China’s most extensive encircling Taiwan, a democratically governed island which China claims as its own territory.
(Reporting by Mikhail Flores, Karen Lema, Nestor Corrales and Michael Martina in Manila and Liz Lee in Beijing; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by David Stanway and Clarence Fernandez)
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