MANILA, June 10 — Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Maria Theresa Lazaro today said she intends to meet ethnic groups from Myanmar to learn about their situation and seek solutions.
“I intend to meet with certain ethnic armed groups and to find out the situation and how we can really try to help,” Lazaro said at the Nikkei Forum in Tokyo.
The Philippines is this year’s ASEAN chair, and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has appointed Lazaro his special envoy to Myanmar.
Lazaro did not specify whom she will meet and where the meeting will be held.
“We’ll see how it works,” Lazaro added.
Myanmar has been ravaged by conflict since 2021 when protests against a coup were brutally suppressed by the military, unleashing civil war involving a loose alliance of rebel groups.
Its leadership has since been barred from top ASEAN meetings, but the bloc has been seeking ways to re-engage with Myanmar since a new, nominally civilian government took over in April.
Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing has said his new government will strive to normalise relations with ASEAN.
In January, Manila convened a “stakeholders’ meeting” that assembled several ethnic rebel groups to find solutions to the crisis.
