PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday referred to Cambodia, which is hosting an international summit led by Southeast Asian leaders, as Colombia.
“Now that we’re back together here in Cambodia, I look forward to building even stronger progress than we’ve already made, and I want to thank the Prime Minister of Colombia for his leadership as ASEAN chair and for hosting all of us,” Biden said while meeting his counterparts in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Phnom Penh.
He was referring to Prime Minister Hun Sen of Cambodia, who is currently chairing the 10-member regional bloc.
The president, who is on a whirlwind trip with stops at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, ASEAN in Phnom Penh and the G20 summit in Indonesia, made a similar slip-up while speaking to reporters at the White House recently.
(This story has been corrected to show ASEAN is 10-member bloc in paragraph 3)
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Jiraporn Kuhakan; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Christina Fincher)
