President Joe Biden will host the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for a special summit in Washington next month, the White House announced Monday.
The meeting of the 10-member ASEAN will be held March 28-29 and is being billed by the White House as an opportunity to demonstrate the U.S. commitment to the bloc and a chance to mark 45 years of U.S.-ASEAN relations.
“It is a top priority for the Biden-Harris Administration to serve as a strong, reliable partner and to strengthen an empowered and unified ASEAN to address the challenges of our time,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
The ASEAN nations are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
ASEAN barred Myanmar’s military-installed government leadership from the last annual summit in October, instead restricting the nation’s participation to non-political representatives. That policy is expected to remain in place for the March summit, according to a Biden administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly.
