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Aquino to discuss on S. China Sea dispute
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III arrived in Jakarta late on Monday for a three-day visit to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as sporadic clashes between ASEAN countries’ naval fleets and Chinese patrol boats continue in the South China Sea
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hilippine President Benigno Aquino III arrived in Jakarta late on Monday for a three-day visit to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono as sporadic clashes between ASEAN countries’ naval fleets and Chinese patrol boats continue in the South China Sea.
Prior to his departure from Manila, Aquino told the local media that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) needed to have a common stand on the exploration of the contested Spratly Islands for when he goes on state visits to Indonesia and Singapore this week.
“We need to come up with a common ASEAN stand for exploration that would be beneficial to all parties,” he was quoted as saying by the Manila Standard Today on Monday.
China has for decades been at loggerheads with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei over the control of the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.
A Filipino ship searching for oil complained last week that it was harassed two days earlier by two Chinese patrol boats near the Reed Bank. A Filipino general deployed two warplanes, but the Chinese boats had reportedly left by the time the aircraft reached the area.
As ASEAN’s current chair, Indonesia has been trying to speed up negotiations to reach a code of conduct in the area, so as to avoid clashes and use of military power among the claimant countries.
Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who met with his Filipino counterpart Albert F. Del Rosario prior to the Aquino-Yudhoyono meeting, has said the grouping needed to find another way to move forward the stalled South China Sea issue by engaging senior officials in working group discussions and direct talks about a code of conduct.
Marty said the discussion on the guidelines should not hamper the willingness to create a peaceful region. The working group has discussed the guidelines for the implementation of a declaration of code of conduct in the South China Sea since 2002.
The guidelines are supposed to be used as a basis for the code of conduct.
But several sticking points remain — including whether the guidelines are to be used as a point of settlement for any conflict or just a mere declaration without legally binding implications — hampering the progress of the two parties in concluding negotiations.
A number of experts, however, have doubted if Aquino brought any fresh proposals or carried any weight at all, as the country has been criticized as being too passive under Indonesia’s chairmanship.
Other observers have accused the Philippines under Aquino of having distanced itself from Indonesia.
“So far the Philippines has tended to be inward looking and less active in regional forums because it has political instability at home,” Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an ASEAN expert at the Habibie Center, said last week.
Dewi said Indonesia should ensure the Philippines’ commitment to realizing ASEAN’s plan to become an integrated regional community by 2015 during the Filipino president’s visit to Indonesia.
Aquino will meet Yudhoyono on Tuesday after a visit to Kalibata Heroes Cemetery. Both leaders will then witness the signing of agreements on education, sports, mutual support for preventing and combating transnational crime.
