Kerry to press China on North Korea during Asian trip

Laos this year takes the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, with the group’s heads of state scheduled to hold a special meeting next month in Sunnylands, California, at the invitation of President Barack Obama as part of his foreign policy to reach out to the region as a counterweight to China. Cambodia is Kerry’s next stop on an around the world diplomatic marathon this week that will also take him to China.

In Beijing Kerry plans “in depth” discussions on the South China Sea, a source of increasing tension between China and ASEAN countries and the United States due to China’s building of artificial islands suitable for use as military bases, the official said.

Ahead of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s planned visit to Cambodia this week, local and worldwide NGOs have urged Mr. Kerry not to sign any new bilateral agreements unless Cambodia vows to improve its human rights and democracy efforts. He will be only the third U.S. secretary of state to visit the country since John Foster Dulles in 1955 and Hillary Clinton in 2012.

But ASEAN unity has not always been possible as China wields great influence among some of its smaller neighbors, such as Cambodia.

“Laos will continue to balance its relations with China and Vietnam, and try to avoid taking sides”, he said. Vientiane, the capital, will in turn host Mr. Obama at an ASEAN meeting this summer, when he will become the first US president ever to visit the country. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details of Kerry’s visit publicly. He also is denying suggestions of disunity among countries that back the opposition and says USA support for foes of President Bashar Assad remains solid.

The Communist Party has ruled impoverished Laos since 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War, which split the country and saw it blanketed by bombs in a secret war led by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Monday that the United States is considering increasing financial aid to help Laos clear the countryside of unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War more than four decades ago.

Kerry travels to Cambodia on Tuesday for a meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen. China and other Asia-Pacific nations, including Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines, have overlapping claims in the South China Sea.

“It is very important to present a united front… but that united front has to be a firm one, not a flaccid one”, the official told journalists traveling with Kerry.

He said South Korea has also pushed for three-way talks with China and the US because of the symbolic significance that would have and the additional pressure it would put on the North, but that Beijing has resisted that too for similar reasons.

The official said the US wants the Chinese to line up with Seoul, Washington and Tokyo in convincing North Korea that the peaceful way forward is to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions but “continuing down the road of provocation is a dead-end street”.