When Asia holds its key annual security meeting on perils ranging from nuclear bombs to rights abuses, the top U.S. diplomat will miss the meeting for the first time in over 20 years but Australia will likely embrace a friendship treaty with its Asian neighbors. The gathering next week of foreign ministers at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Regional Forum in Laos will coincide with the first progress in over a year in the region’s most irritating threat: North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Full Story