Virtual summit: SE Asia leaders meet by video on pandemic

Forced apart by the coronavirus pandemic, Southeast Asian leaders linked up by video on Tuesday to plot a strategy to overcome a crisis that has threatened their economies and kept millions of people in their homes under lockdowns.

The 10 leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations held further talks later in the day, also through video conferencing, with their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea, who expressed support in helping ASEAN fight the coronavirus.

Vietnam, ASEAN's leader this year, has postponed an in-person gathering tentatively to June.

"It is in these grim hours that the solidarity of the ASEAN community shines like a beacon in the dark," Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in an opening speech.

Containment efforts have placed the pandemic "actually under control", he said, warning against complacency, with a number of member countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines, fearing spikes in infections after large-scale testing is conducted.

Founded in 1967 in the Cold War era, ASEAN a diverse bloc representing more than 640 million people has held annual summits of its leaders and top diplomats with ceremonies steeped in tradition, protocol and photo-ops.

Derided as a talk shop by critics, the bloc is known largely for photographs of its leaders locking arms at annual meetings in a show of unity despite often-thorny differences.

Diplomats say that unity is now crucial as the region battles COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. All of ASEAN's member states have been hit by infections, with the total number of confirmed cases reaching more than 20,400, including over 840 deaths, despite massive lockdowns, travel restrictions and home quarantines.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the pandemic has had a severe impact on the global economy, but he told fellow leaders that their countries have jointly confronted past crises and have braced for contingencies.

"The battle against COVID-19 has made us more aware that we are in a community with a shared future," Li said.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Japan will help Southeast Asia fight the outbreak, including by the establishment of an ASEAN centre for infectious diseases.

South Korea, among the Asian nations battered by the pandemic early, "confronted numerous challenges head-on" and is now gradually heading into a "phase of stabilisation", South Korean President Moon Jae-in said.

Intensive testing and tracing, public cooperation and transparency "have proven to be indispensable in our fight", he said.

"The COVID-19 crisis is a crisis like no other in the past, not just in its potential calamitous scale but in the hope to contain and stop it by unstinting cooperation and fullest trust between all countries," said the Philippines' Department of Foreign Affairs.

"If any of us fails, the rest will follow."