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| Image: Flickr User - U.S. Department of State |
By Prashanth Parameswaran
A look at the significance of an upcoming meeting between the two sides next year.
On December 23, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council confirmed that Southeast Asian leaders had accepted an invitation from U.S. President Barack Obama to meet for a summit in the Californian resort of Sunnylands early next year.
“The President is pleased the leaders have accepted his invitation to gather at Sunnylands, in early 2016,” Myles Caggins, an NSC spokesman, said.
The 2016 meeting itself is not news. Following the last round of Asian summitry in Malaysia last November, official sources had already begun disclosing that a “special summit” between the United States and the 10 ASEAN leaders would be held in Sunnylands, with a tentative date of February 15-16 (even though U.S. officials had publicly stuck with the more cautious “first half of next year” formulation). At the time, the choice of venue received attention since this was also where Obama had met Chinese president Xi Jinping at the Rancho Mirage retreat in 2013.
Read the full story at The Diplomat