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ASEAN Foreign Ministers Agree to Statement on Vietnam-China South China Sea Dispute
China’s biggest oil rig, HD-981, is now near Vietnam
ASEAN foreign ministers agreed Saturday to issue a stand-alone joint statement on China’s oil drilling near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea that have triggered clashes with Vietnamese coast guard vessels, the Philippine and Singaporean foreign ministers said.
“In the spirit of centrality and unity, ASEAN will come up with a common position to uphold the peace and security in the region,” Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told Kyodo News.
Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam said ASEAN “can’t stay silent” this time.
“We have to be neutral. Vietnam will have one version, China will have another version of the events. It’s difficult for ASEAN to take sides but neutrality doesn’t mean staying silent. We can’t stay silent,” Shanmugam said.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Shanmugam said, “Our credibility has been affected a little in the last few years.”
“If these events took place a few days ago and ASEAN foreign ministers meet here today, leaders meet tomorrow and we didn’t say anything I think our desire to play a central role, our desire to be united, our desire to have a peaceful region, all of this, and ASEAN’s own integrity, I think, will be seriously damaged.”
Both ministers said ASEAN senior officials are now working on the statement.
“We agreed that ASEAN foreign ministers would issue a statement, and, therefore, there was unanimous agreement that there should be statement and the ASEAN senior officials are meeting to draft the statement,” Shanmugam said.
Shanmugam said the ministers also discussed a broad range of other topics.
Vietnam, which denounced Chinese ships’ ramming and firing water cannons at its vessels, raised the issue at the meeting of senior Association of Southeast Asian Nations officials Friday.
An ASEAN diplomat told Kyodo News the Philippines supported Vietnam, saying China’s recent actions violate international law and the Declaration on the Conduct of the South China Sea, which ASEAN and China signed in 2002.
The Philippines also briefed ASEAN on the progress of its case against Chinese incursions into its territory at a U.N. tribunal, according to the diplomat.
The diplomat said Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa expressed concern at the slow consultation process to craft a legally binding code of conduct in the South China Sea.
ASEAN is concerned that the standoff in the waters claimed by both China and Vietnam might deteriorate into an armed conflict that could hurt regional stability and delay plans to transform Southeast Asia into a community by 2015.
Pham Quang Vinh, Vietnam’s deputy foreign minister, said earlier that senior ASEAN officials have recommended that ASEAN come up with a “collective response to the situation in the form of united position.”
“We are not discussing in detail, but we are sharing the position on the seriousness of what is happening now in the SCS,” he said.
The ASEAN foreign ministers meeting is in preparation for their leaders’ summit on Sunday, he said.
Sihasak Phuangketkeow, permanent secretary of Thailand’s Foreign Ministry, said ASEAN is very concerned about the situation and seeks a “constructive” statement that “reflects our common concern.”
Both Vietnamese and Thai officials met Friday on the sidelines of the senior officials meeting.
Disputes over territory and sovereignty in the South China Sea have dogged ASEAN for years, but impasses among China, the Philippines and Vietnam in particular have become more serious.
In Phnom Penh in 2012, ASEAN foreign ministers failed to reach a consensus on acceptable language to refer to the South China Sea issue involving the dispute between the Philippines and China on Scarborough Shoal, forcing the grouping to scrap issuance of a joint communique for the first time in ASEAN’s 45 years.
China, the Philippines and Taiwan claim ownership of the shoal, north of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
The Spratly Islands are also contested, claimed in whole by China, Taiwan and Vietnam, and in part by Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines.
China and Vietnam dispute ownership of the Paracel Islands.
ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Myanmar, this year’s chair of the ASEAN meetings, will give a press conference at the end of the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting Saturday.
==Kyodo
Tags: ASEAN, ASEAN Foreign Ministers, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Brunei, Cambodia, China, China's oil rig, China’s biggest oil rig, HD-981, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas, Singapore, Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam, South China Sea, South China Sea Dispute,Spratly Islands, Thailand, Vietnam
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