Deafening silence from Asean

KUALA LUMPUR – Southeast Asia will not issue a statement on the rejection of Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea by an international tribunal, regional diplomats said yesterday, blaming the no-comment on pressure by Beijing.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had weighed whether to speak out on Tuesday’s ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, said Southeast Asian diplomats with knowledge of the matter.

But the 10-member ASEAN, whose unity has been increasingly strained in the face of

Chinese expansionism, could not find common ground, they said.

“ASEAN officials had prepared a draft text but there was no agreement to release a joint statement,” said a Southeast Asian diplomat, adding that China was believed to have leaned on its ASEAN allies Laos and Cambodia to prevent a statement in the highly charged affair.

“Some ASEAN countries are definitely not happy. Beijing’s action can be seen as interference in ASEAN’s centrality,” the source said.

Another senior Southeast Asian diplomat said China has “succeeded in splitting ASEAN through its allies on the South China Sea issue,” referring to Laos and Cambodia.

Chinese pressure was blamed last month for a startling diplomatic U-turn by ASEAN, which swiftly disowned a joint statement released by Malaysia after an ASEAN-China meeting.

That statement had expressed alarm over Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea. The fiasco highlighted the bloc’s inability to maintain a united front on the issue.

China claims nearly all of the strategic sea – home to some of the world’s most important shipping routes – and has steadily strengthened its toehold by converting reefs and sandbars into islands.

The Philippines brought an international arbitration case over China’s growing assertiveness, resulting in this week’s thorough repudiation of Beijing by the Hague tribunal, which said Chinese claims had no legal basis.

China has in turn rejected the ruling and reiterated its positions.

ASEAN members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, have competing claims to parts of the resource-rich sea.

Inner discord

European governments are torn over how to respond to China’s defeat in a legal battle over the South China Sea, fearful of alienating their second-largest trading partner and hampered by a maritime dispute among their own members.

China angrily vowed to ignore the ruling by a court in The Hague dismissing its claim to much of the South China Sea. Its envoy to Washington said the verdict would “intensify conflict and even confrontation,” though he also said Beijing remained committed to negotiations in disputes over the vital trade route.

Despite US pressure on the European Union to take a stand on the issue, the bloc has so far been unable to agree a common statement, leaving diplomats to argue over the wording acceptable to all 28 member states.

The EU says it takes no position in the dispute between China and the Philippines, whose accusation that Beijing has violated its economic and sovereign rights was upheld in Tuesday’s ruling by a five-judge tribunal under the 1982 UNCLOS.