WASHINGTON, 12 May 2022, (TON): The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the United States at the upcoming summit in the American capital intend to discuss the situation around China and Ukraine.

This was announced on Wednesday by the coordinator for the affairs of the regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans in the National Security Council (NSC) of the White House, Kurt Campbell.

“You will see a number of initiatives that will clearly demonstrate the areas in which we want to intensify our engagement with ASEAN “our educational initiatives, the focus on climate issues, some infrastructure projects. I think that we will strive to discuss some relevant modern problems in Asia.”

Campbell said at the Institute for Peace in Washington “we will talk about Myanmar, we will talk about China, we will talk about how events in Ukraine affect the Indo-Pacific region.”

He added “the participants of the summit, which is to be held on May 12-13 in the American capital, w-ill also discuss economic is-sues, creating opportunities for increasing the volume of American investments in the countries of the association.

Speaking about the situation in Ukraine, the White House spokesman stressed “I think we all recognize that the larger strategic challenges will play out in the Indo-Pacific region. I think there was a feeling in previous [US] administrations that we decided to focus on East Asia or the Indo-Pacific and then ran into other pressing issues that may have distracted us a little.”