Barack Obama used the first visit by a US president to Malaysia since the 1960s to win backing for his much-vaunted Asia “pivot”, signalling the increasing importance of the moderate Muslim country to US efforts to shore up support in southeast Asia at a time of increasing assertiveness by China.
However, there was no breakthrough on persuading Malaysia to sign up to the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, widely seen as the economic backbone of Mr Obama’s Asia push.
Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, said the two countries had decided to upgrade their relationship to a “comprehensive partnership”. The move appeared to draw a line under decades in which US-Malaysia ties were frayed by the often anti-US rhetoric of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who left office in 2003 after 22 years in power.