WASHINGTON, D.C.: United States President Joe Biden is hosting leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) as part of his administration’s efforts to demonstrate to them that Washington hasn’t lost focus on the Pacific even while dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden will begin his talks over dinner on Thursday night with leaders from the eight Southeast Asian countries attending the two-day summit. It will be the group’s first meeting at the White House. The leaders will take part in more formal talks at the State Department on Friday.

Participating nations are Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The other two, Myanmar and the Philippines are not expected to attend.

Outgoing Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte earlier said he would skip the summit, citing next month’s change in leadership as his reason. And the Asean has barred Myanmar from sending all but nongovernmental leaders to meetings since that country’s military ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup in February 2021.

The Biden administration has condemned the coup, and the US leader is expected to address the situation in Myanmar with the Asean leaders,

as well as discuss China and the war in Ukraine.

The summit in Washington comes before Biden departs next week for a whirlwind visit to South Korea and Japan — his first visit to Asia as president — for talks with those two countries’ leaders. He’ll also meet during the trip with leaders from the Indo-Pacific strategic alliance with the US known as the Quad: Australia, India and Japan.

Biden has sought to put greater focus on the

Quad and improving relations with Pacific nations in the early going of his presidency as he sees a rising China as the most threatening economic and national security adversary to the US.

Biden, who vowed to make the Pacific a greater focal point of US policy, has seen his attempt at an “Asia pivot” complicated by the most serious fighting in Europe since World War 2, which has consumed much of his foreign policy bandwidth in recent months.

A top White House Asia policy adviser said the administration remained committed to improving relations with Southeast Asian nations to address climate, economic and education initiatives.

“There has been a sense that in previous administrations that we had set off with a determined pace to focus on East Asia or in the Indo-Pacific and then find ourselves with other pressing challenges that perhaps draws [us] away a little bit,” Kurt Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs on the White House National Security Council, said at an event on Wednesday hosted by the US Institute of Peace. “I think there is a deep sense that that can’t happen again.”

On private talks among the leaders, Campbell said the administration expected these to be “direct, polite, but maybe a little bit uncomfortable at times,” as the US and Asean members were not on the same page on all issues.