By Kate Lamb and Stanley Widianto
JAKARTA (Reuters) -Foreign ministers of two dozen countries met in Indonesia on Friday with the U.S.-China rivalry, the war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles dominating talks at Southeast Asia's annual security-focused gathering.
Top diplomats from China, the United States and Russia were among those in Jakarta for the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), where broad-based agendas are typically hijacked by geopolitical flare-ups, offering a theatre for fierce rebukes, superpower squabbles and occasional walk-outs.
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged stability in the Indo-Pacific, the Taiwan Strait and Ukraine, adding there was "no greater challenge" to regional security than North Korea's "provocative" missile launches.
"We need to work together to end North Korea's unlawful weapons of mass destruction programme and ballistic missile launches," he said.
Blinken on Thursday held what the State Department called "candid and constructive" talks with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, the latest in a series of interactions it said were aimed at managing differences between the two big powers.
Wang had told Blinken "a rational and pragmatic attitude" was key to getting their relations on the right track.
U.S.-China sparring marred last year's ARF, which came a few days after then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, enraging Beijing, which launched live-fire drills around the self-ruled island and cut off several channels of dialogue with Washington.
On Thursday, Chinese fighter jets monitored a U.S. Navy patrol plane that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, as China carried out military exercises south of the island, which it claims.
Separately, the European Union's foreign policy chief said after the ARF concluded that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had "aggressively" rejected a call to withdraw troops from Ukraine.
"Lavrov responded... very aggressively and explained his point of view and said that everything is a Western conspiracy," said Josep Borrell.
Lavrov said earlier this week the war in Ukraine would not end until the West "gives up its plans to preserve its domination", including its "obsessive desire" to defeat Russia strategically.
Russia says its invasion of Ukraine, which has lasted more than a year and a half, is a "special military operation".
Lavrov had no plans to contact U.S. counterparts while in Jakarta, according to his spokesperson, Maria Zakharova.
He did meet China's Wang Yi, however, and the two sides would "strengthen strategic communication and coordination", according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
SHARPENING RIVALRY
The closed-doors ARF brings together the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan, Britain, India, South Korea, China, the United States and more.
The foreign minister of host Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, said the forum had agreed to "strengthen preventive diplomacy".
"Sharpening rivalry continues to divide the region. Our region also hosts numerous potential flashpoints. This challenge is becoming more complicated," she said.
ASEAN is struggling to de-escalate a bloody crisis in its member state Myanmar, whose ruling military was roundly condemned at Friday's forum for its alleged atrocities against the civilian population.
Myanmar has seen escalating violence since the military seized power in a 2021 coup and unleashed a lethal crackdown on opponents, including deploying fighter jets and heavy artillery to flush out pro-democracy fighters.
Myanmar's generals have been barred from the bloc's meetings over their failure to honour a two-year-old deal with the grouping to end hostilities and start dialogue, which has tested ASEAN's unity.
The bloc late on Thursday "strongly condemned the continued acts of violence, including air strikes, artillery shelling, and destruction of public facilities" in a communique issued more than 30 hours after foreign ministers concluded their meeting, a delay that has in previous years indicated discord.
(Writing by Martin Petty, Kanupriya Kapoor; editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel and Alex Richardson)
