 |
| Image: Flickr User - U.S. Department of State |
By Ankit Panda
Laying the groundwork for a presidential visit later this year, John Kerry met with senior Laotian officials.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Laos for a rare visit just days after the country’s Communist Party selected a new leader. Kerry’s visit to Laos launches a broader Asia-wide diplomatic tour, which will also include stops in neighboring Cambodia and China. According to the Washington Post, Kerry is the third secretary of state to visit Laos in six decades–past high-level U.S. visits included Hillary Clinton in 2012 and John Foster Dulles in 1955. In part due to the legacy of the Vietnam War and a U.S. bombing campaign in Laos in the late-1960s and early-1970s, ties between the two countries have been cool, though gradually improving.
In Laos, Kerry met with Thongsing Thammavong, the country’s prime minister and a member of the Communist Party’s Politburo. Kerry also met with Thongloun Sisoulith, the country’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Kerry will not meet Bounnhang Vorachit, the country’s erstwhile vice president, who was elected to the position of secretary-general of the Central Committee of of Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP) on Friday. Laos will be particularly significant for U.S. diplomatic outreach to Southeast Asia this year as it takes on the chairmanship of the ten-member Associated of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The United States has sought to advance its interests in the region and counteract Chinese influence through ASEAN.
Read the full story at The Diplomat