PM Lee to visit ASEAN countries

PM Lee to visit ASEAN countries

SINGAPORE: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong will visit Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia this week as part of a new leader's traditional introductory trips to fellow ASEAN states, his office said on Monday.

The visit to the three fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) comes amid suggestions that Myanmar could lose the ASEAN chairmanship next year unless tangible democratic reforms are implemented.

Lee will begin his tour on Tuesday in Laos, where he will meet Prime Minister Bounnhang Vorachith and call on President Khamtay Siphandone, an official statement said.

In Myanmar on Wednesday he is scheduled to meet his counterpart Soe Win and the chairman of the ruling junta, Senior General Than Shwe.

Lee will go on to Cambodia on Thursday for a meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen and an audience with King Norodom Sihamoni.

Lee, who took office last August, has already visited the other ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Lee's visit to Myanmar comes two weeks before a foreign ministers' meeting in the Philippines at which Yangon may come under pressure to carry out reforms or risk losing the rotating ASEAN leadership next year. -- AFP