Turn page on Sea row: Kerry

US backs resumption of China-Philippines talks

VIENTIANE, July 26, (Agencies): The Philippines and China should “turn the page” and hold talks over contested areas of the South China Sea after a tribunal shot down Beijing’s claims to the strategic waterway, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday.

Relations between China and the Philippines hit a nadir earlier this month after Beijing refused to recognise a UN-backed ruling invalidating its claims to much of the sea.

The Philippines, which says it owns areas claimed by China, took the case to a Hague-based tribunal for arbitration.

Kerry reiterated Washington’s stance that the tribunal’s decision to favour the Philippines was binding, but added that it was time to seek new ground.

“I would encourage President Duterte to engage in dialogue, in negotiations,” Kerry told reporters in Laos, referring to the tough-talking new Philippines leader.

Kerry was due to fly to Manila for talks with Duterte Tuesday.

Kerry’s call for fresh talks between Manila and Beijing comes at the request of his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

“The foreign minister said very clearly the time has come to move away from public tensions and turn the page,” Kerry told reporters.

“And we agree with that ... no claimant should be acting in a way that is provocative, no claimant should take steps that wind up raising tensions.”

The two envoys met on the sidelines of a regional security forum of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that has been dogged by the issue of the South China Sea.

The Philippines had been expected to push for the bloc to support the tribunal ruling in a punchy joint-statement.

pital were given the wrong chemotherapy dosages as long ago as 2012. (AFP)

6.3-quake hits

off PNG:

A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck off Papua New Guinea in the Admiralty Islands area early Tuesday, US geologists said, but no destructive Pacific-wide tsunami

But the bloc shied away from a diplomatic confrontation with China.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay told reporters that he supported that approach, describing the tribunal case as a dispute just between Beijing and Manila.

“The other countries are not part of our filing of the case before the arbitral tribunal so why would we insist that it be put in the ASEAN statement,” Yasay said.

ASEAN member states span communist autocracies such as Laos and Vietnam, the tiny Islamic sultanate of Brunei and populous democracies like Indonesia and the Philippines.

Consensus

It works on the basis of consensus diplomacy.

But critics have slammed the grouping for failing to present a strong front against China’s aggressive divide and rule policy among its neighbours.

China has repeatedly blamed the United States for stoking tensions in the region through its military patrols, and of taking sides in the dispute, accusations Washington denies.

Speaking to reporters on a conference call, a senior U.S. administration official said at the end of a visit to China by National Security Adviser Susan Rice that she had emphasised all parties should take steps to reduce tensions and use the ruling to reinvigorate regional diplomacy.

Rice also told Chinese officials, who included a top military officer, that U.S. military operations were designed to contribute to peace and stability wherever they happened, including in the South China Sea, the official said.

“Those operations are lawful, they will continue, they’ve been longstanding, and again they’re designed to impart confidence and stability,” he added.

Meanwhile, the United States, Japan and Australia have urged China

was expected.

The offshore quake hit at 5:38 am (1938 GMT Monday) and occurred 128 kms (80 miles) southeast of Lorengau, Papua New Guinea, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The epicentre was at a depth of 6.6 kms.

No damage or injuries were immediately not to construct military outposts and reclaim land in the disputed South China Sea, in a strong show of support for Southeast Asian nations that have territorial disputes with Beijing in the resource-rich area.

A joint statement by the three allies, issued late Monday, ironically fills the vacuum created by Southeast Asia’s main grouping, which during its meeting of foreign ministers on Sunday failed to take a stand against China because of disunity among themselves.

“The ministers expressed their serious concerns over maritime disputes in the South China Sea. The ministers voiced their strong opposition to any coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions,” said the statement issued by Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers Fumio Kishida and Julie Bishop.

The three met in Vientiane on the sidelines of a series of meetings organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. The grouping could have leveraged the recent decision by a permanent arbitration panel in The Hague, which ruled in favor of the Philippines in a case it brought against China in their dispute in the South China Sea.

The panel ruled that China’s claim that amounts to claiming almost all of South China Sea was illegal. Implicit in the ruling is that China has no standing in its other disputes with Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam, which also are ASEAN members.

But ASEAN became divided because of China’s divide-and-rule diplomacy by winning support from Cambodia, and to some extent Laos, which resulted in the grouping issuing a joint statement on South China Sea that did not mention China by name or the arbitration ruling.

Instead, it fell upon ASEAN’s allies to rush to their support.

reported. The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no threat of a widespread tsunami.

Quakes are common for the island nation that lies on the 4,000-kilometrelong Pacific Australia plate, which forms part of the “Ring of Fire”, a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates. (AFP) DHAKA, July 26, (AFP): Bangladeshi police Tuesday killed nine suspected Islamist extremists believed to be planning another mass attack following a deadly cafe assault this month, the country’s police chief said.

Police who stormed their hideout said the men belonged to a Bangladeshi group blamed for the Dhaka cafe attack in which 20 hostages, mostly foreigners, were killed.

“From police intelligence sources we learnt that they were planning to carry out a major incident. We conducted the operation to foil any such incident,” national police chief A.K.M Shahidul Hoque told reporters.