ASEAN patches up rift over territorial disputes with Beijing

 By Jonathan Manthorpe, 

Vancouver Sun  

July 23, 2012

The 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations have papered over the most serious rift in their 45-year history on how to con-front Chinese aggression in disputed ocean territory.

But the argument among foreign ministers meeting in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh a week ago puts at question whether the governments are ready, willing or able to complete the free trade agreement and policy integration required for the planned formation of the ASEAN Economic Community by 2015.

The dispute, which led to the ASEAN foreign ministers being unable for the first time in 45 years to issue a final communi-que preparatory to the leaders summit later this year, revealed with brutal clarity Beijing's ability to manipulate to its own ends the inner counsels of the organization.

The discord was sparked by China's increasingly assertive claims to own almost all the South China Sea, which exploration shows covers very large deposits of oil and natural gas.

In recent months Chinese patrol boats have been involved in tense standoffs with vessels from the Philippines and Vietnam, both of which assert economic rights over large areas of the South China Sea based on claimed ownership of islands in the Paracel and Spratly chains. China also has overlap-ping claims with other littoral nations, Malaysia and Brunei.

The Manila government's foreign minister Albert del Rosario, backed by Vietnam, wanted the ASEAN Phnom Penh com-munique to make specific reference to recent clashes between his country's coast guard and Chinese patrol boats at Scar-borough Shoals, well within the Philippines' 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone.

However, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen, who chaired the meeting and whose country's economy depends on trade and aid from China, refused to allow the reference.

Hun Sen parrots Beijing's position that the South China Sea disputes should be settled bilaterally and not be tabled in international forums like ASEAN.

Beijing dispelled any doubt there may have been that Hun Sen was acting as a proxy for China by publicly thanking him for keeping China's "core interests" in mind.

For relatively small and weak countries like Vietnam and the Philippines dealing with China directly and alone over these disputes clearly puts them at a huge disadvantage.

They need the backing and support of ASEAN colleagues; otherwise China will be able to dictate the format of negotiations. Beijing's starting point is that it owns the South China Sea right down to Indonesian waters about 1,200 kilometres from the nearest undisputed Chinese landfall, and it has even designated this huge tract of sea and islands a Chinese municipality with its own administration.

In a brisk and purposeful round of shuttle diplomacy at the end of the last week, Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa managed to get agreement from ASEAN members on a communique.

But that required the Philip-pines and Vietnam to back down. In general terms, the statement calls on ASEAN-promoted principles for peaceful resolution of maritime disputes and resolving conflicts in accordance with international law.

The statement also called for an early agreement between ASEAN and China on a code of conduct for economic development of the South China Sea and the avoidance of conflict.
The code has been under discussion since 2002 when ASEAN and China signed a joint declaration that they intend to move toward a legally binding agreement. In 2011 the parties agreed on guidelines for implementing the 2002 agreement, but they have made little progress toward actually producing a code of conduct.
Beijing's interest is to delay any agreement as long as possible so it can use its burgeoning navy and other initiatives to further establish a presence in the South China Sea.
Perhaps to that end, Beijing has said it is willing to meet ASEAN members in September to discuss the process for developing a code.
If that happens and can be portrayed as taking the process forward, China will probably be able to keep the dispute off the agenda of the East Asia summit in November.
Eighteen countries, including the United States, attend the East Asia summit. Washington has already shown great willingness to back the ASEAN states over the South China Sea, which the Barack Obama administration sees as a precedent-setting question of freedom of navigation.
The four ASEAN members in dispute with China - Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei - are supported by Indonesia and Singapore in their position that the group should address Beijing on the issue.
But the other ASEAN states - Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Burma - which either have land borders with China or major economic ties or both, are against pushing the issue as an organization.
That does not bode well for either the territorial dispute with China or for the project to build ASEAN into a fully fledged economic community.
jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com