While the Myanmar quagmire will continue to dominate Asean's agenda under Cambodia and future chairs, one must not forget that the current chair must also deal with a myriad of challenges across all sectors of the grouping's ongoing cooperation. The much-awaited foreign ministerial retreat last Thursday has once again shown that Asean remains a closely knit, pragmatic family.
This sentiment emerged after the chair's press statement was released. Even though the chair has the prerogative on the final wording, Cambodia invited all members to provide their input, which resulted in an Asean-centred statement for all to see. The tone is leaning toward "engagement" rather than "disengagement" with Myanmar. For the first time in nearly a decade, the statement's section on Myanmar took up more space than the South China Sea dispute.
