When Asia holds its key annual security meeting on perils ranging from rights abuses to nuclear bombs, the top US diplomat will snub the meeting for the first time in over 20 years but Australia will likely embrace a friendship treaty with its Asian neighbors.
The gathering next week of two dozen countries at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Laos will coincide with the first progress in over a year in the region's most irritating threat: North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Six of the nations also meet next week in Beijing for talks aimed at getting the North to disarm.
News that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will skip the Laos ministers' forum and send a deputy prompted wide-ranging speculation: that Washington is uneasy with China's growing military strength, angry over Myanmar's human rights record, or has priorities elsewhere. Rice simply cited a scheduling conflict.
It will be the first ASEAN Regional Forum since 1982 skipped by the US secretary of state.
Key US ally Australia, meanwhile, has hinted it wants to warm ties with Asian governments by signing a nonaggression pact that it so far has shunned with arguments that it's unnecessary and might interfere with ties to Washington.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said the Australians told him they would join the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and other diplomats said Australia may sign a document of intent to join during the forum.
"They will be most welcome," Syed Hamid said, adding that it would allow Australia to join a new East Asia summit in December.
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