U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will stress the central regional role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in a virtual meeting with the bloc's foreign ministers on Tuesday, State Department spokesman Ned Price told a news briefing.
The meeting with the 10-member bloc will be the first since the Biden administration took office in January and comes amid concerns among diplomats and others that Washington has not been paying sufficient attention to a region that is crucial to its regional strategy to counter an increasingly powerful China.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Daphne Psaledakis, Humeyra Pamuk and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Leslie Adler)
