US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to address leaders and diplomats at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Bali.
Her visit comes after discussions by Asian ministers over an increasingly tense territorial dispute in the South China Sea.She is also expected to speak about North Korea's nuclear programme and the situation in Burma.
Top diplomats from Europe and Asia are attending the gathering.
Chinese ire On Thursday, leaders at Asean agreed a deal with Chinese officials aimed at establishing guidelines for talks on the South China Sea, a regional dispute which has led to a number of confrontations in the past.
China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan all have overlapping claims to all or parts of the area, which is thought to contain significant oil and mineral reserves.
Kurt Campbell US diplomat
US officials said Mrs Clinton would push leaders to formalise the deal and offer American support for the process.
"It will take strong efforts and goodwill on all sides to improve the circumstances among the claimants in the South China Sea," said Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat for Asia."The United States wants to see a process whereby there is deeper dialogue among all of the claimants and also a deeper discussion between China and Asean," he added.
Mrs Clinton is to meet Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the sidelines of the summit to discuss the issue.
The BBC's Kim Ghattas in Washington says Mrs Clinton stepped into the South China dispute at the Asean summit in Hanoi last year, when she said maritime security in the region was in the US national security interest - a move which angered the Chinese.
Mrs Clinton will meet her counterparts from the 10-nation Asean bloc and the wider East Asia Summit on Friday, followed a day later by the Asean Regional Forum (ARF).
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