The Asean Summit - Cambodia preparing for arrival of world leaders

The flags of Cambodia and Asean fly side-by-side as the Kingdom is set to host the ASEAN Summit next week. - Phnom Penh Post/ANN

PHNOM PENH, Nov 6 (Phnom Penh Post/ANN): With Cambodia set to host the Asean Summit and related meetings in Phnom Penh, the leaders of 34 countries outside of the bloc will be touching down in the Kingdom next week, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Cambodian foreign affairs ministry secretary of state Kung Phoak said that the Asean forum would bring together world leaders such as US President Joe Biden and China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang in place of President Xi Jinping.

Notably absent – without offering an official reply to his invitation – will be Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov attended the foreign minister’s meetings in Cambodia in August, but it is not currently known whether he will attend either.

Phoak said that two other countries who will have diplomats at the meetings but whose leaders aren’t attending are Malaysia’s Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as both of those countries are due to hold elections soon.

“What I want to emphasise is that it is a real achievement by Cambodia to mobilise 34 countries, dozens of international institutions and top leaders from the two superpowers, plus the leaders of the Asean members, to attend this summit.

“The scale of this undertaking is different. The size of it all is different. But we were still able to get them all to sit down and talk. Normally, sometimes, certain delegations do not want to sit by each other.

"They want to sit away from each other, requests like that. But the important thing in general is that the discussion of the agenda and other priority tasks goes ahead smoothly and without any problems,” he said.

He also said that this does not mean that the top leaders of every country will attend every meeting and for lower level meetings it is commonplace for appointed representatives to attend them instead to engage in the work of detailed negotiations to solve problems effectively. - Phnom Penh Post/ANN