By AAMER MAD­HANI | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pres­i­dent Joe Biden is look­ing to nudge south­east Asian lead­ers to be more out­spo­ken about Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine, but the is­sue con­tin­ues to be a del­i­cate one for many mem­bers of the re­gion’s 10-coun­try al­liance with deep ties to Moscow.

Biden wel­comed lead­ers from As­so­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Na­tions to the White House on Thurs­day night for an in­ti­mate din­ner to kick off the two-day sum­mit, the first meet­ing of the group to be held in Wash­ing­ton in its 45-year his­to­ry.

The White House is al­so try­ing to demon­strate that it is step­ping up in the Pa­cif­ic even as the ad­min­is­tra­tion has been fo­cused on the war in Ukraine. It an­nounced that the Unit­ed States would com­mit to more than $150 mil­lion in new projects to bol­ster South­east Asia’s cli­mate, mar­itime and pub­lic health in­fra­struc­ture.

But Biden knows that find­ing con­sen­sus with ASEAN mem­bers on the Russ­ian in­va­sion could prove to be dif­fi­cult.

White House press sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki on Thurs­day said Ukraine would be on the agen­da for the lead­ers’ talks, but she couldn’t make a pre­dic­tion on whether the group would touch on the Russ­ian in­va­sion in the sum­mit’s com­mu­nique.

“I will say that a num­ber of the ASEAN par­tic­i­pants have been im­por­tant part­ners in call­ing out the ag­gres­sive ac­tion of Rus­sia,” she said, and “in par­tic­i­pat­ing and in sup­port­ing sanc­tions and, cer­tain­ly, abid­ing by them.”

Some ASEAN mem­bers -- Viet­nam, Myan­mar, and Laos — for years have de­pend­ed on Rus­sia for mil­i­tary hard­ware. With the ex­cep­tion of Sin­ga­pore — the on­ly mem­ber of the 10-mem­ber group to im­pose di­rect sanc­tions against Moscow — the al­liance has avoid­ed crit­i­ciz­ing Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin or Rus­sia’s pros­e­cu­tion of the war.

In­done­sia has been guard­ed in its pub­lic com­ments on in­va­sion and—as has the Philip­pines—made clear it won’t im­pose sanc­tions against Rus­sia. Thai­land joined a Unit­ed Na­tions vote against the in­va­sion of Ukraine but has main­tained a po­si­tion of neu­tral­i­ty in the war.

Lead­ers were sched­uled to hold for­mal talks at the State De­part­ment on Fri­day, and Biden was sched­uled to ad­dress the group.

The ASEAN na­tions in­clude Brunei, Cam­bo­dia, In­done­sia, Laos, Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore, Thai­land and Viet­nam. The top lead­ers from ASEAN mem­ber Myan­mar were barred from at­tend­ing, while out­go­ing Philip­pines Pres­i­dent Ro­dri­go Duterte dis­patched For­eign Af­fairs Sec­re­tary Teodoro Loc­sin Jr. to rep­re­sent his gov­ern­ment.

The sum­mit comes be­fore Biden’s trip next week to South Ko­rea and Japan — his first vis­it to Asia as pres­i­dent. He’ll hold talks with those two coun­tries’ lead­ers and al­so meet dur­ing the trip with lead­ers from the In­do-Pa­cif­ic strate­gic al­liance known as the Quad, made up of Aus­tralia, In­dia, Japan and the U.S.

Biden has tried to put greater fo­cus on im­prov­ing re­la­tions with Pa­cif­ic na­tions in the ear­ly go­ing of his pres­i­den­cy, view­ing a ris­ing Chi­na as the most threat­en­ing eco­nom­ic and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ad­ver­sary to the Unit­ed States.

But his at­tempt at re­cal­i­brat­ing U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy has been com­pli­cat­ed by the most se­ri­ous fight­ing in Eu­rope since World War II.

The new U.S. in­vest­ment in ASEAN na­tions an­nounced at the start of the sum­mit on Thurs­day in­cludes $40 mil­lion for clean en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture, $60 mil­lion for a new re­gion­al mar­itime ini­tia­tive and $6 mil­lion to ac­cel­er­ate dig­i­tal de­vel­op­ment in the re­gion.

The White House al­so an­nounced that Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty’s School of Ad­vanced In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies will launch a pri­vate­ly fund­ed in­sti­tute for ris­ing lead­ers from ASEAN na­tions that will bring mid-ca­reer pub­lic sec­tor of­fi­cials to the Unit­ed States for lead­er­ship train­ing.

ASEAN has barred Myan­mar — in cri­sis since the army oust­ed the elect­ed gov­ern­ment of Aung San Suu Kyi in Feb­ru­ary 2021 — from send­ing all but non­govern­men­tal lead­ers to ASEAN meet­ings.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion con­demned the mil­i­tary coup that led to the ouster of Suu Kyi. She was con­vict­ed by a mil­i­tary court last month of cor­rup­tion and sen­tenced to five years in prison in the first of sev­er­al cor­rup­tion cas­es against her. Suu Kyi has de­nied the charges.

Kurt Camp­bell, co­or­di­na­tor for In­do-Pa­cif­ic Af­fairs on the White House Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, said the ad­min­is­tra­tion ex­pects the pri­vate talks will be “di­rect, po­lite, but maybe a lit­tle bit un­com­fort­able at times” as the U.S. and ASEAN mem­bers are not on the same page on all is­sues.

He added the ad­min­is­tra­tion wants to see the group “play a more deeply en­gaged role in the crit­i­cal diplo­ma­cy about next steps” in Myan­mar.