Defense ministers from the United States, China, Japan, Russia, India, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea are expected to jointly welcome ASEAN's invitation to join the group's ministerial-level hotline to help defuse regional tensions, official sources said Tuesday."The plus-eight countries are expected to welcome the expansion to them after they had been invited in 2019," an ASEAN official said on the eve of an ASEAN Defense Ministers-Plus meeting to be joined by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe and Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi.The annu…READ FULL ARTICLE
