CEBU, Philippines (AP) — A peace plan agreed on by Southeast Asian leaders five years ago has failed to end Myanmar’s civil war but it could still serve as a basis for working with the new government that will emerge from recent elections there, Thailand’s top diplomat said Friday.
The nationwide violence that followed the Myanmar army’s forcible seizure of power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021 has become one of the biggest challenges and sources of embarrassment for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The 2021 army takeover was met by widespread protests which were violently put down by the army, leading to armed resistance and brutal fighting all over the country.
Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow told The Associated Press in an interview that ASEAN’s “five-point consensus” plan has failed to halt the violence in Myanmar.
ASEAN, however, could try to re-engage with Myanmar's new leaders who would emerge from recently held elections, which could be a "new starting point for continued efforts on dialogue, reconciliation and as a part of a broader peace process,” Sihasak said.
“We don’t seek to isolate Myanmar,” he said. “We seek to bring Myanmar back to the ASEAN family.”
The peace plan — agreed on by ASEAN heads of state in April 2021 — called for an immediate end to fighting and hostilities, dialogue among all parties that a special envoy of the bloc would help initiate, and the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Myanmar’s military government has allowed limited humanitarian aid on its own restrictive terms but has not complied with the other terms of the plan.
If there would be moves to deescalate the tensions and violence, “we can re-engage with Myanmar more,” possibly by gradually lifting a restriction on the attendance of its political delegates to annual ASEAN meetings, Sihasak said.
“Maybe to some degree, they can start to deescalate the violence. First, avoid attacks against civilians and also avoid the use of air attacks, which really affect civilians … these are the benchmarks for us,” he added.
On Thursday, ASEAN’s foreign ministers, in their first major meeting this year in the central seaside city of Cebu in the Philippines, decided to stick with the peace plan.
“We all reaffirmed that the five-point consensus remains the basis of our collective efforts to address and resolve the crisis in Myanmar,” Sihasak said. “We don’t seek to isolate Myanmar. We seek to bring Myanmar back to the ASEAN family.”
The still-unofficial results of the new polls give the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party a large majority of the seats contested, and assure the military, which is automatically granted 25% of the legislative seats, retains control over the government.
Although imperfect, the elections could serve as a new opportunity to encourage change in Myanmar, Sihasak said.
ASEAN has not recognize Myanmar's elections, the first since the army’s 2021 takeover, Philippine Foreign Secretary Theresa Lazaro said Thursday. The Philippines is this year’s ASEAN chair, giving it the most influential voice.
Lazaro told reporters Thursday that ASEAN “has not endorsed the three phases of the elections that were held”over December and January in Myanmar and did not explain what could change the bloc's stance.
Critics say the election was neither free nor fair. Opponents were arrested and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which won a landslide victory in 2020, was dissolved by the military government in 2023 for refusing to register under conditions it rejected.
Sihasak told The AP that in a recent meeting with officials in Myanmar, he renewed a proposal for Suu Kyi, 80, to be moved from detention to house arrest to give her more access to doctors.
“It’s a good humanitarian gesture that will be well-received by the international community,” Sihasak said.
Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year prison term on charges widely viewed as spurious and politically motivated. She has been kept in isolation and reportedly has not even seen her lawyers since December 2022.
CORRECTS ID OF THAI FOREIGN MINISTER - From left, Myanmar's Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Hau Khan Sum, Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow and Vietnam's Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung walk together after the group photo during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers' Retreat in Cebu, Philippines Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (Jam Sta Rosa/Pool Photo via AP)
CORRECTS ID - Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow, center, attends the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers' Retreat in Cebu, Philippines Thursday, Jan. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Hernandez, Pool)
NEW YORK (AP) — Financial markets are churning on Friday as investors try to figure out what President Donald Trump’s new nominee to lead the Federal Reserve will mean for them.
The early reactions have been uneasy and sometimes quick to change because of the uncertainty. U.S. stocks fell modestly, with the S&P 500 down 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 111 points, or 0.2%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower.
The value of the U.S. dollar, meanwhile, initially sank against other currencies following Trump’s announcement before bouncing back.
The value of the U.S. dollar, meanwhile, swiveled up and down several times following Trump’s announcement before climbing. And some of the wildest action was again in precious metals markets, where the price of gold went through more cycles of tumbling sharply and retracing some of its losses.
Whoever leads the Fed has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. Such decisions lift or weigh on prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control. Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates, which usually helps goose the economy but can also lead to higher inflation.
A fear in financial markets, one that's pushed up gold’s price and weakened the U.S. dollar’s value, is that the Fed will lose some of its independence because of Trump. The longtime assumption has been that the Fed can operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make decisions that are painful in the short term, such as keeping interest rates high and grinding down on the economy, to fix a long-term problem, such as getting inflation back down to its goal of 2%.
Trump’s nominee, Kevin Warsh, used to be a governor on the Fed’s board, so investors are familiar with him. That could also mean Warsh is familiar with and hopes to continue the institution of the Fed as an independent operator. But Warsh has also been critical of the Fed’s current chair, Jerome Powell.
“Indeed, Warsh is not the Fed’s guy, he is Trump’s guy, and has shadowed Trump on monetary policy almost every step of the way since 2009,” according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group. “This doesn’t necessarily mean that Warsh will push the Fed into rate cuts soon,” but it could indicate he may be quicker to do so when the time comes.
On Wall Street, stocks of metals miners tumbled as the price of gold sank 6% to $5,033.00 per ounce. Gold's momentum has suddenly run out following a tremendous rise where its price roughly doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Monday and got near $5,600 on Thursday.
Silver, which has been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, fell even more. It dropped nearly 14%.
Prices for gold and other precious metals had been surging as investors looked for safer investments while weighing a wide range of risks, including a potentially less independent Fed, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, political instability, threats of tariffs and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.
Friday's drops for metals prices helped send the stock of miner Newmont down 5.8%. Freeport-McMoRan, another miner, dropped 5.8%.
Helping to limit the market's losses were Tesla, which rose 3.5%, and Microsoft, which added 0.7%. They both bounced back after dropping on Thursday despite delivering better profit reports for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Apple swung from an early loss to inch up by 0.1% after the iPhone maker reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.24%. That's where it was late Thursday, but in the overnight and early-morning hours, it climbed near 4.28% before falling back.
A rise in a bond's yield indicate that its price is weakening. Yields may have felt some upward pressure from a report released Friday morning showing U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than economists expected. That in turn could put additional pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of continuing to cut them, as it did late last year.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in much of Europe following a more mixed performance in Asia.
Stocks rose 1.2% in Jakarta after the CEO of Indonesia’s stock market, Imam Rachman, resigned Friday. Stocks there had stumbled in prior days after MSCI, an influential company in the investment industry that creates stock and other indexes, warned about market risks such as a lack of transparency.
Anthony Spina, left, works with fellow options traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A person stands in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's Nikkei index at a securities firm Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, in Tokyo. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders pass by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader talks on the phone near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A man walks past an electronic board displaying stock prices and Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite Index, at the Indonesia Stock Exchange in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana)
