ASEAN chair the Philippines has welcomed various political and ethnic groups from army-ruled Myanmar to a “stakeholders’ meeting”, Manila’s foreign minister said on Thursday, in a bid to advance the regional bloc’s stalled peace plan.
– Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro, who took over this year as the ASEAN special envoy on the crisis in war-torn Myanmar, did not name the groups represented or say when the meeting took place.
– “I encouraged their active, constructive and meaningful sharing of perspectives on the implementation of the ASEAN Five-Point Consensus,” she said, referring to the peace plan agreed between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and Myanmar in 2021.
– Lazaro said discussions included advancing deescalation, facilitating aid delivery, addressing transnational crime and fostering political dialogue.
– The military is currently holding a general election, with two of its three phases of voting completed and results showing low turnout and a party allied with the military winning the majority of seats so far.
– Critics have dismissed the vote as a sham to prepetuate army rule through civilian proxies and ASEAN has not sent observers.
– Aside from some improvements in humanitarian access, ASEAN’s peace plan has largely been a failure, with fighting raging in swathes of the country and the junta refusing to engage in dialogue with opponents it calls “terrorists”.
– The Philippines is the 2026 ASEAN Chair and the political dialogue comes a week before the regional bloc’s foreign ministers head to the central island of Cebu for a retreat.