China and Myanmar likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An increasingly assertive China and a humanitarian crisis in Myanmar are likely to be high on the agenda when Southeast Asian leaders meet in Australia for a rare summit this week.

The ASEAN-Australia Special Summit that starts in Melbourne on Monday marks 50 years since Australia became the first official partner of the Asian bloc.

Leaders of nine of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations are expected to attend the three-day summit, with Myanmar excluded from political representation over its failure to stem violence in that country since a military junta seized control in 2021. East Timor’s leader has been invited as an official ASEAN observer and Australian Prime Anthony Albanese invited his New Zealand counterpart to Melbourne to meet regional leaders.

“Australia sees ASEAN at the center of a stable, peaceful and prosperous region,” Albanese said in a statement on Friday.

“Strengthening our relationship ensures our shared future prosperity and security,” he added.

Australia has hosted ASEAN leaders once before in Sydney in 2018. The leaders issued a statement with the host country then that called for a code of conduct covering the contested waters of the South China Sea, where China has become increasingly assertive over its competing territorial claims with a number of ASEAN countries.

Australia and the Philippines, an ASEAN member, conducted joint sea and air patrols in the South China Sea for the first time in November last year.

Also in November, Australia proposed to ASEAN members that they declare in a joint statement at the end of the Melbourne summit their support for the 2016 arbitration ruling in The Hague in favor of the Philippines that invalidated Beijing’s vast