WASHINGTON, July 7: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not attend a key Southeast Asian meeting this month, officials said on Wednesday amid warnings that the move could be viewed as a slight by the region’s leaders.

Rice had told Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) foreign ministers that she could not make it to the Asean Ministerial Meeting in the Laotian capital Vientiane in late July due to a clash of schedules, regional diplomats said.

But some officials had linked her skipping of the trip to concerns in Washington that the region was not pushing enough for democratic reforms in military-ruled Myanmar.

As this would be the first time in about two decades that a US Secretary of State is not participating in the annual Asean talks, some Asean leaders may perceive it as downgrading of US participation in the region’s most important diplomatic event.

The meeting includes a July 28-29 post-ministerial dialogue between Asean and its key trading partners, notably the United States, European Union, China, Japan and Russia, as well as an Asean Regional Forum (ARF), the only official security meeting in the Asia-Pacific region.

Rice, who is expected to visit Africa during that period, would be represented by her deputy Robert Zoellick, the former US Trade Representative and an old Asean hand, to the meetings.

Unlike her predecessor Colin Powell, who maintained a personal touch in relations with his Asean counterparts, Rice has delegated much of the work in the region to Zoellick.

Her top priority in Asia is the Korean nuclear crisis.

She leaves this Friday for a six-day trip to China, South Korea and Japan and will likely discuss possible options if North Korea fails to return to multilateral talks aimed to end its nuclear weapons programme.

“The fact that she will go to Asia and talk about North Korea demonstrates that this is the key number one priority in the region for the administration,” said Derek Mitchell of the US Centre for Strategic Studies.

“Because you would think that Rice would go to ARF, symbol of our engagement in Asia, but she is going over there this month really to talk about North Korea,” said the former Pentagon official.

The six-party talks among the United States, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and China aimed at wooing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for aid have been stalled since June 2004.—AFP