Asean Forum Unlikely to Produce Accord Over South China Sea Southeast Asia’s annual security forum will draw big hitters from Asia and beyond when it kicks off in Brunei this weekend, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on his first trip to the Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s Regional Forum since succeeding Hillary Clinton. But analysts warn not to expect any quick fixes on one of the biggest flash points in this part of the world: Who owns what in the South China Sea. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images US destroyer USS Fitzgerald arrives at the former US naval base in Subic Bay, Olongapo City, north of Manila on June 27 to join exercises close to a flash point area of the South China Sea. On the face of it, some of the tensions between China and other claimants to the potentially energy-rich waters have improved in recent weeks. China’s new foreign minister, Wang Yi, in May flagged his willingness in principle to discuss a code of conduct to resolving the various territorial disputes in the region. Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang agreed to open up a new telephone hotline to Beijing during a recent visit to China to douse fisheries disputes after a series of encounters between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels. The reality, though, is that China has prepared plenty of caveats that could delay any meaningful discussion on the South China Sea. While discussing the code of conduct with the 10 members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations does represent progress of sort, Mr. Wang also revived the idea of creating a panel, known as an eminent persons group, to discuss the code before its fate is decided. This is potentially problematic. This group of grandees could get bogged down in all sorts of arcane issues, especially on the question of who sits on the panel. “This is why China suggested the eminent persons group, in the first place,” says Ian Storey at the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. “It’s just a mechanism to slow it all down.” Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy and a close watcher of South China Sea disputes, thinks that China’s intention is to buy itself sufficient time to exert enough influence over the Asean bloc to persuade the Philippines to withdraw a complaint against Beijing at the United Nations. Manila in January filed a case with the U.N.’s International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea that aims to stop Chinese incursions into its U.N.-declared exclusive economic zone and challenges China’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea. China has refused to participate in the hearings, describing its sovereignty over the waters as “indisputable.” At the same time, Beijing is stepping military and paramilitary patrols in the South China Sea, effectively blocking the Philippines from returning to Scarborough Shoal, a reef in the Philippines’ U.N.-declared exclusive economic zone. “China ‘talks the talk’ while using gunboat diplomacy to pressure Southeast Asian states,” Mr. Thayer says. Sure enough, China’s Mr. Wang warned Thursday that Beijing would respond if certain countries provoke it by occupying shoals or reefs in the South China Sea claimed by China. This came after the Philippines last week sent soldiers and supplies to a wrecked ship on Second Thomas Shoal, which the Philippines says is inside its territorial waters. China has also warned “third parties” – a thinly-veiled reference to the United States – that their efforts to influence the security equation in the South China Sea would be “futile,” as Mr. Wang put it earlier this week. The U.S. and the Philippines Thursday began five days of joint naval exercises off Scarborough Shoal, a previous site of confrontation between the Philippines and China. The Philippines is also becoming increasingly open about its willingness to have larger numbers of U.S. troops temporarily based in the country, part of Washington’s plans to step up so-called rolling deployments of troops as part of its rebalancing of naval power to East Asia and the Pacific. The upshot is that very little is likely to happen in terms of resolving the South China Sea disputes. And for many observers, the biggest topic of interest is whether Mr. Kerry will be as engaged on this maritime security issues as Ms. Clinton, who repeatedly stressed the U.S.’s interest in pushing a multi-nation solution to the problem. blogs.wsj/searealtime/2013/06/28/asean-forum-promises-little-real-progress-on-south-china-sea-disputes/
Posted on: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 02:27:25 +0000
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