JAKARTA (Dispatches) -- Malaysia on Thursday rejected an offer by the administration of President Donald Trump to host a Pacific Rim summit in the United States next year.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had sought his views on Malaysia’s position on a possible APEC meeting in the U.S. in January during a recent regional summit in Bangkok.
Pompeo told him that "because Chile is not able to host the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this November... the U.S. is thinking of hosting APEC somewhere in January in the U.S.", the top Malaysian diplomat said.
"I have informed the American officials while they were in Bangkok that we do not think this is a good idea,” he said.
The APEC summit had been scheduled for November 16-17 in Chile, but President Sebastian Pinera suddenly cancelled it because of ongoing civil unrest in the South American country.
Malaysia is at the center of talks for any replacement summit as it is next year's chair of APEC, a trade-focused grouping of 21 Pacific Rim economies stretching from China to Chile and the United States.
The sharp retort came days after most Southeast Asian leaders skipped a session with U.S. officials after President Trump decided to avoid the last week’s regional annual summit in Thailand’s capital.
Last Monday, just three leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) showed up at the meeting with U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, who was leading the American delegation at the summit in the Thai capital.
Video from the event showed seven foreign ministers sitting at a table usually reserved for heads of states.
Washington sent a relatively low-level delegation to the weekend ASEAN summit - a decision that was widely perceived as a snub, given that other top leaders were present.
The U.S. has reportedly taken issue with what it saw as ASEAN leaders’ "intentional effort to embarrass” President Trump at the summit.
This was the second year in a row that Trump has skipped the summit. Vice-President Mike Pence attended last year's meeting in Singapore.
During the summit in Bangkok, member states rallied against protectionism amid fears of dragging global growth made worse by the U.S.-China trade war.