New ASEAN Chair Cambodia to Push Engagement With Myanmar Junta

Following a meeting with the junta’s foreign minister today, Prime Minister Hun Sen said he would visit Myanmar next month.

Cambodia will push to engage directly with Myanmar’s military government during its upcoming chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the country’s Prime Minister Hun Sen said yesterday, six weeks after the junta was excluded from the bloc’s biannual summit.

As chair of ASEAN for 2022, Cambodia’s approach to Myanmar will set the tone for the bloc’s efforts to address the spiraling political and humanitarian crisis that has ravaged the country since the the military’s February coup.

In a speech during an inauguration ceremony for a highway in Prey Veng province, Hun Sen said that Myanmar’s military-appointed foreign minister Wunna Maung Lwin would visit Cambodia today, and that Hun Sen would likely travel to Myanmar soon for talks with its military rulers. “There is a strong possibility I will visit Naypyidaw to meet General Min Aung Hlaing to work with him,” Hun Sen said. “If I don’t work with the leadership, whom can I work with?”

In full: https://thediplomat.com/2021/12/new-asean-chair-cambodia-to-push-engagement-with-myanmar-junta/

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