The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, the latest highlight of a busy diplomatic sequence in the region, started Friday, November 18 in Bangkok, with the war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles in the canvas. background.
This is the first face-to-face meeting since 2018, for the leaders of the 21 member states who are due to exchange until Saturday.
Their program is dominated by the economic consequences of the conflict in Ukraine, which the countries of the South deplore without condemning the Russian invasion, and questions of regional stability, between North Korea and recurring disputes in the South and East China Seas.
Just before the start of the summit, Pyongyang launched another missile, which appears to have fallen into the sea inside Japan's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), according to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The latter had raised Thursday with Chinese President Xi Jinping his
"serious concerns"
about the situation in the East China Sea, where Tokyo regularly complains about Beijing's activity around the Senkaku Islands.
"Nobody's Garden"
The Chinese leader for his part insisted that the Asia-Pacific
“was no one’s garden”
in written remarks at an economic summit on the sidelines of Apec, a veiled allusion to his American rival which also unfolds in the region.
In Bangkok, where he is continuing his diplomatic marathon begun at the G20, Xi Jinping takes center stage, in the absence of his American counterpart Joe Biden, who is being held in Washington for the wedding of his granddaughter, and represented by Vice-President President Kamala Harris.
Emmanuel Macron and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman are the guests of the summit.
The French president took the opportunity to call on the Asia-Pacific countries on Friday to join the
“growing consensus”
against the war in Ukraine, stressing that this war was also
“their problem”
.
"France's number one priority is to contribute to peace in Ukraine and to try to have a global dynamic to put pressure on Russia
," he said at the APEC economic leaders summit. .
He intends to
“work very closely with China, India, the whole region, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, to create a growing consensus saying
“this war is also your problem”.
When opening the dialogues, Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha spoke about the climate:
“We must cooperate to reduce the effects
(of climate change, Ed)
and protect our world.
We cannot live as we lived in the past
,” he said.
The Apec summit closes a diplomatic sequence of ten intense days in Southeast Asia, after a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Phnom Penh and the G20 on the Indonesian island of Bali.
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