At the 48th meeting, the foreign ministers will focus mainly on the progress of implementing a for the ASEAN Community.
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Vietnam’s Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, second from right, attends the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Foreign Ministers Meeting plenary session in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tuesday, August 4, 2015.
The Yomiuri Shimbun Making its control over the South China Sea a fait accompli by buying time on the pretext of continuing dialogue, China’s posture has now become crystal clear with Beijing turning its back on efforts to formulate global rules pertaining to the disputed waters.
During a stop in Singapore on Monday, Wang insisted that the issue should not be raised at the talks, and that it would press ahead with its controversial island building.
“China has never believed that multilateral fora are the appropriate place for discussing specific bilateral disputes”, Wang told reporters before travelling to Malaysia. If the U.S. raises the issue we shall of course object.
In his opening remarks today, Malaysian Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman took a swipe at Beijing’s refusal to address the thorny issue with its neighbours at the talks.
“This was a considerable test for ASEAN, but all parties concerned managed to handle it in a timely and effective manner”, he said. “We have made a positive start but we need to do more”.
The South China Sea is the centre of a long running territorial dispute between China which is claiming most of the area and several Asian countries. Tensions flared last year when China began work to build artificial islands in the Spratly Islands, which the U.S. and Beijing’s rival claimant countries fear could impede freedom of navigation and overflights in a major transit area for the world’s oil and merchandise. Fiery Cross (Kagitingan) airstrip “would also be capable of landing and deploying the Chinese Shenyang J-11 fourth-generation fighter, using runway requirements derived from a Russian Su-27 fighter, which would be capable of combat operations within 870 miles of the reef”.
China called on the Philippines to withdraw a case it has filed at a United Nations arbitration tribunal over rival claims in the South China Sea and return to bilateral negotiations but wants no talk of South China Sea dispute at upcoming ASEAN meeting.
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario of the Philippines, which has been involved in the most direct territorial confrontations with China, called for a “halt in reclamation, halt in construction, and halt in aggressive actions that could further heighten tensions”.
The United States, anxious about China’s increasing assertiveness in the region, is expected to repeat a call for Beijing to halt land reclamation on islands in disputed waters.
“The freeze proposal may seem even-handed on the surface but it is actually unrealistic and will not work in practice”, he said.
The discussions, known as the Asean Regional Forum (ARF), will expand over the following two days to include US Secretary of State John Kerry, Wang, and envoys from the wider region including Japan, the Koreas, Russian Federation and elsewhere.
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Kerry arrives later Tuesday and will meet with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, as both sides grapple with the threat posed by the Islamic State.
