U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will skip the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' annual foreign ministerial meeting in Manila early next month, instead sending her deputy to lead the U.S. delegation, AP reported. The State Department said Tuesday that Rice plans to be in the Middle East while Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte attends the ASEAN meetings on Aug 1-2. State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack expressed regret that Rice would not be in Manila, but said that she was prioritizing talks on Iraq and Middle East peace. «I don't think it has to do with the importance of the business necessarily but of the timing,» he said of the ASEAN meetings. The Philippines is hosting meetings of ASEAN foreign ministers and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea as well as the ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia's largest security grouping that brings together Asian and Western foreign ministers and hundreds of personnel.
