Kerry: US backs Phl-China talks on sea row
Washington supports talks between Manila and Beijing over the South China Sea, US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday.
Kerry, who arrived in Manila last night from Laos, is expected to give the same message when he meets today with President Duterte.
This developed as the US, Japan and Australia urged China not to construct military outposts and reclaim land in the South China Sea, in a strong show of support for Southeast Asian nations that have disputes with Beijing in the resource-rich area.
A joint statement by the three allies, issued late on Monday, ironically came as foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) on Sunday failed to take a stand against China because of disunity.
Kerry and his counterparts Fumio Kishida of Japan and Julie Bishop of Australia issued the statement in Vientiane on the sidelines of the ASEAN Plus Three ministerial meeting.
“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 joint statement.
They also expressed “strong support” for the rule of law and called on the mainland and the Philippines to abide by the UN-backed arbitration panel’s award on the South China Sea, “which is final and legally binding on both parties.”
They stressed that this was a crucial opportunity for the region to uphold the existing rules-based international order and to show respect for international law.”
In a clear broadside at Beijing, the statement urged all parties to refrain from “unilateral actions that cause permanent physical change to the marine environment..... and from such actions as largescale land reclamation, and the construction of outposts as well as the use of those outposts for military purposes.”
Kerry said his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Monday asked for US support in the talks with Manila following an international court ruling against Beijing over the dispute earlier this month.
Beijing did not participate in and has refused to accept the July 12 ruling by the UNbacked Permanent Court of Arbitration, in which US treaty ally Manila won an emphatic legal victory.
Kerry said that in his meeting with Wang in Vientiane, “the foreign minister said the time has come to move away from public tensions and turn the page.”
“And we agree with that,” Kerry told a news conference. “No claimant should be acting in a way that is provocative, no claimant should take steps that wind up raising tensions.”
China’s dismissal of the court ruling as illegitimate presented a challenge, Kerry said. The international community, including the United States, sees the ruling as legally binding and a matter of law, he added.
“So we still have a task ahead of us, a challenge, which is to try to work going forward to make sure that we are resolving the issues through diplomacy and the rule of law,” he said.
China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have rival claims.
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.
Wang told Kerry that China and ASEAN had agreed the dispute should get back onto the “correct” track of being resolved by direct talks with the parties concerned.
China “hopes the United States side takes actual steps to support the resumption of talks between China and the Philippines, and support the efforts of China and ASEAN to maintain regional peace and stability,” Wang said, according to a foreign ministry statement released yesterday.
China scored a diplomatic victory on Monday as ASEAN dropped any reference to the court ruling in a joint statement in the face of resolute objections from Cambodia, China’s closest ASEAN ally.
Speaking to reporters in Vientiane, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said the dispute was not between China and the United States but between China and the Philippines.
Lost opportunity
In Manila, the Stratbase Albert del Rosario Institute (ADRi) said ASEAN has lost an opportunity to speak against the “coercive” diplomacy of China with its weak joint statement at the end of the regional bloc’s summit in Laos.
Days of deadlock ended in a lukewarm statement after the Philippines reportedly dropped a request for their joint statement to mention the arbitral court ruling invalidating China’s nine-dash line claim.
ADRi said the Philippines’ legal victory in the arbitral court could have been used as a rallying call at the summit.
“Instead, the release of what many described as a watered down joint statement from the 10-nation bloc became a ‘lost opportunity,’” said ADRi president Dindo Manhit.