Foreign ministers of two dozen countries met in Indonesia yesterday with US-China rivalry, war in Ukraine and North Korean missiles dominating talks at Southeast Asia's annual security-focused gathering.

Top diplomats from China, the United States and Russia were among those in Jakarta for the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), where broad-based agendas are typically hijacked by geopolitical flare-ups, offering a theatre for fierce rebukes, superpower squabbles and occasional walk-outs.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged stability in the Indo-Pacific, the Taiwan Strait and Ukraine, adding there was "no greater challenge" to regional security than North Korea's "provocative" missile launches.

"We need to work together to end North Korea's unlawful weapons of mass destruction programme and ballistic missile launches," he said.

Blinken on Thursday held what the State Department called "candid and constructive" talks with top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, the latest in a series of interactions it said were aimed at managing differences between the two big powers.

Wang had told Blinken "a rational and pragmatic attitude" was key to getting their relations on the right track.

US-China sparring marred last year's ARF, which came a few days after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, enraging Beijing, which launched live-fire drills around the self-ruled island and cut off several channels of dialogue with Washington.

Separately, the European Union's foreign policy chief said after the ARF concluded that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had "aggressively" rejected a call to withdraw troops from Ukraine.

"Lavrov responded... very aggressively and explained his point of view and said that everything is a Western conspiracy," said Josep Borrell.

Lavrov did meet China's Wang Yi, however, and the two sides would "strengthen strategic communication and coordination", according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

The closed-doors ARF brings together the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan, Britain, India, South Korea, China, the United States and more.

The foreign minister of host Indonesia, Retno Marsudi, said the forum had agreed to "strengthen preventive diplomacy".

Asean is struggling to de-escalate a bloody crisis in its member state Myanmar, whose ruling military was roundly condemned at yesterday's forum for its alleged atrocities against the civilian population.