A

SEAN may have completed the guidelines for the declaration of conduct in the South China Sea, but problems are likely to remain with the presence of military bases that belong to claimants.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said Thursday that four ASEAN member states, would have to resolve issues of military bases in the South China Sea.

“That is what the claimants will have to discuss between themselves,” he told reporters in a limited interview on the sidelines of a series of ASEAN meetings here. “They are committed to avoiding open conflicts. They have committed themselves to resorting to peaceful means, to negotiations and discussions. They will certainly show that they are complying with the guidelines.”

China and four ASEAN countries — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam — as well as Taiwan have laid overlapping claims in the Paracels and the Spratlys in the South China Sea, with China claiming the largest part.

Satellite imagery, passed to The Daily Telegraph, shows that a substantial harbor has been built, which could house a score of nuclear ballistic missile submarines and a host of aircraft carriers, the British newspaper reported.

In what will be a significant challenge to US Navy dominance and to countries ringing the South China Sea, one photograph shows China’s latest 094 nuclear submarine at the base, just a few hundred miles from its neighbors.

Other images show numerous warships moored to long jettys and a network of underground tunnels at the Sanya base on the southern tip of Hainan Island.

According to University of Indonesia security expert Andi Widjajanto, the Philippines’ armada has moved further west since last month, while Vietnam’s armada — the largest among the ASEAN claimants in the disputed waters — is moving closer to China, leading to clashes between the two ASEAN countries and China, which has far more power in the area as well as oil and gas exploration vessels accompanied by Chinese military ships.

The guidelines, approved by the bloc on Wednesday, regulate joint projects by ASEAN members and China in the fields of marine environment, SARS, transnational crimes, the safety of navigation and biodiversity.

The guidelines, however, which Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario says are not satisfactory, do not specifically regulate joint exploration of oil and gas.

It is estimated that oil and natural gas reserves in the Spratly region amount to 17.7 billion tons, making it the world’s fourth-largest reserve bed.

China traded barbs with Vietnam and the Philippines after several incidents that occurred last month, which the Southeast Asian nations said was Chinese “harassment”.

Beijing denied the allegation, saying it would only use violence when attacked, while warning its Asian neighbors to stop searching for oil near the disputed Spratly Islands and vowed to assert its sovereignty, the Associated Press reported.

Surin said one of the purposes of maintaing such guidelines was to stop any incidents of harassment.

“Whether or not it will lead to that, we will have to hold on to the commitment that the parties have made — that there will be no violence, that there will be no open conflict and that this will not affect security in the region,” he said.

“And that is part of the claimants’ will to enter into direct discussions on the conflict issue, piece by piece, one by one, area by area.”

Andi said he saw no end to disputes in the South China Sea between the ASEAN claimants and China if the regional grouping left the issue of the presence of military bases in the disputed waters up to both of them.

“There is no hope [to see this problem end] because both sides [the ASEAN claimants and China] have different approaches,” he told The Jakarta Post.

“They can’t even agree on the format of negotiations, with the Philippines and Vietnam, for example, eager to internationalize the South China Sea issues and China wanting to keep them bilaterally, let alone starting the negotiations.”