Friday, November 16th, 2012 
President Benigno S. Aquino III. Robert Viñas / Malacañang Photo Bureau
This time, President Benigno Aquino will do the talking in
Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and he will insist that Southeast Asian nations
take a common stand on territorial disputes with China in the West
Philippine Sea (South China Sea).
Mr. Aquino leaves for the Cambodian capital Friday to attend the
21st plenary session of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(Asean) that observers expect will be dominated by a raft of territorial
rows.
The two days of annual talks will be preceded on Sunday by a
summit of the leaders of the 10 Asean countries, which have struggled to
forge a united stand on China’s claims to the West Philippine Sea.
Speaking to reporters in Tagaytay City Thursday, Mr. Aquino said
all 10 members of Asean should speak with one voice at the summit, which
would be attended by leaders from East Asian countries and Asean
dialogue partners China, the United States, Canada, India and the
European Union.
US President Barack Obama will be there, too, but he and Mr. Aquino have no scheduled meeting during the summit.
But Mr. Aquino and the other Asean leaders are hoping Obama will
support them in their efforts to contain China, which is flexing its
economic and military muscles to assert its claim on the West Philippine
Sea, where islands and islets, reefs and atolls are believed to be
sitting on vast oil and gas reserves, and which is home to sea-lanes
vital to global trade.
Firmer consensus
Mr. Aquino said the Philippines wanted to have a firmer consensus
to hasten the signing of a code of conduct for the West Philippine Sea
and the implementation of the Declaration of Conduct on South China Sea.
The President noted that Asean included four countries with some
overlapping claims to islands and waters in the West Philippine Sea—the
Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Nonmember Taiwan also has claims to territory in the West Philippine Sea.
Asean also includes Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Burma, Singapore and Thailand.
Mr. Aquino said tensions flared last summer as soon as the
Philippines announced a service contract for exploration of the sea so
“there should be clear-cut policies to achieve stability.”
“We can talk to the other claimants that aren’t Asean members,
but since we want to maintain Asean centrality, we must have just one
voice in Asean… in this regard,” Mr. Aquino said.
The Philippines and Vietnam have this year
expressed growing concern at what they perceive as increasingly
aggressive tactics by China in staking its claims to the sea.
China insists it has sovereign rights to
nearly all of the waters and has refused to discuss the territorial
disputes with Asean as a bloc, insisting on one-on-one talks with its
rivals.
Panatag standoff
From early April to mid-June, Chinese and
Philippine ships faced off at Panatag Shoal (Scarborough Shoal), a
resource-rich area on the Philippine side of the sea.
At about the same time, China made a show
of force in the Paracels Islands on Vietnam’s side of the sea, building a
military garrison on Woody Island and sending a large fishing fleet
accompanied by patrol vessels to the area—all in response to Hanoi’s
enacting a maritime law that asserted Vietnamese sovereignty over the
Paracels.
With Washington keen to assert itself as a
Pacific power and counter a rising China, Obama is expected to be “quite
vocal” on the sea rows, said Pavin Chachavalpongpun of Kyoto
University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies.
Obama is likely to reiterate that the
United States has a fundamental interest in freedom of navigation in the
sea, while urging Asean and China to agree on a code of conduct for the
area, according to Ian Storey, a regional security analyst of the
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
Asean had hoped to negotiate a code of
conduct this year governing behavior in the disputed waters but progress
stalled when Asean foreign ministers had a falling out over the
maritime issue at a ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh in July.
Cambodia, the current Asian chair and a
close China ally, refused to allow Hanoi and Manila to mention specific
run-ins with Beijing over the sea, preventing the group from issuing a
joint communiqué for the first time in its 45-year history.
“Cambodia will be keen to avoid a repeat of
the July fiasco,” said Storey, but he warned that Phnom Penh “won’t
support any move on the West Philippine Sea by its Asean partners that
would annoy China.”
Storey and Pavin agreed there was little
chance of a code of conduct being successfully negotiated at the
upcoming talks but there would be an effort to show parties were looking
for diplomatic solutions.
Manila Declaration
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario
reiterated the Philippines’ commitment to a peaceful resolution of the
territorial disputes as the country marked the 30th-year anniversary of
the Manila Declaration.
Thirty years ago Thursday, the UN General
Assembly adopted the Manila Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of
International Disputes, a document initiated by the Philippines,
Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Nigeria, Romania, Sierra Leone and Tunisia.
In a statement from the Department of
Foreign Affairs (DFA), Del Rosario stressed the Philippine stand of
resolving international disputes through the rule of law and without the
use of force, as embodied in the 1982 declaration.
Diplomats often refer to the declaration
when discussing territorial disputes closest to home, in the case of the
Philippines, the country’s territorial dispute with China in the West
Philippine Sea.
Del Rosario and Vietnam’s foreign minister
argued for the mention of their countries’ specific disputes with China
in the West Philippine Sea in the customary joint communiqué but
Cambodia blocked their efforts.
Asked if he would try to get the
Philippines’ brushes with China in the sea on Asean record in Phnom
Penh, Mr. Aquino said: “Well, we will go after that.”
He added: “We have unity within Asean. But
every country will have to weigh its interest and be guided by each
country’s interest, as we are being guided by our country’s interest.”
East Asian disputes
A row between China and Japan over rival
claims to islands in the East China Sea, which has severely shaken
diplomatic and trade ties between the Asian powers this year, is also
expected to cast a shadow over next week’s talks.
In yet another territorial dispute, Japan
is at loggerheads with fellow US ally South Korea, whose President Lee
Myung-bak angered Tokyo with a surprise visit to a disputed island chain
in the sea between the two countries in August.
Lee and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko
Noda are planning to hold their first formal talks since the spat
erupted on the sidelines of next week’s meetings, Kyodo News said this
week, citing Japanese government sources.
But traditional trilateral talks between
the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea are not expected to occur
because of the tensions.
On the economic front, Asean members are
set to launch negotiations over a giant free trade zone with China,
Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.
The 16 nations account for roughly half the global population and around a third of the world’s annual gross domestic product.
Asean, which marks its 45th founding anniversary this year, is moving toward a single economic community by 2015. With reports from Tarra Quismundo and AFP
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