The leaders of 7 out of 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations did not attend the ASEAN-USA summit, at which the representative of Washington read out the invitation of President Donald Trump to visit him in America for a separate “special summit”.
In particular, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-Och, who is the chairman of the organization this year, as well as Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Suan Fook and Laos Thonglong Sisulit, arrived at the summit. The remaining countries of the bloc – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar and the Philippines were represented by foreign ministers. As Philippine Finance Minister Carlos Dominguez said in an interview with reporters, “this decision was made in connection with the appropriate level of the US delegation”.
Trump did not attend the ASEAN Leaders Summit and the East Asian Summit on November 2-4 in the Thai capital and did not send either the Vice President or the US Secretary of State to Bangkok.
As President of the Washington delegation, Robert O’Brien, the US National Security Advisor, arrived in Bangkok.